Harry was just thinking that all he needed was for Dumbledore's pet bird to die while he was all alone in the office with it, when the bird burst into flames.

I had an American journalist say to me, "Is it true you wrote the whole of the first novel on napkins?" I was tempted to say, "On teabags, I used to save them.

You might belong in Hufflepuff, Where they are just and loyal, Those patient Hufflepuffs are true, And unafraid of toil.

The sky was a cold iron-grey, like the underside of a shield. A sharp breeze lifted the hems of skirts and rattled the leaves on the immature trees; a spiteful, chill wind that sought out your weakest places, the nape of your neck and your knees, and which denied you the comfort of dreaming, of retreating a little from reality.

Sukhvinder wished that she could be more like Krystal: funny and tough; impossible to intimidate; always coming out fighting.

Every writer must have a chip of ice in his heart.

Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here.