Time to sit down," Fred told Harry, "Or we're going to get run over by the bride.

But some part of him realized, even as he fought to break free from Lupin, that Sirius had never kept him waiting before. . . . Sirius had risked everything, always, to see Harry, to help him. . . . If Sirius was not reappearing out of that archway when Harry was yelling for him as though his life depended on it, the only possible explanation was that he could not come back. . . . That he really was . . .

Everything was curved to fit the walls: the stove, the sink and the cupboards, and all of it had been painted with flowers, insects and birds in bright primary colours.

The Prophet is bound to report the truth occasionally," said Dumbledore, "if only accidentally.

The wizards represent all that the true 'muggle' most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit!

Every writer prefers good reviews over bad ones, and every writer wants to have lots of readers. But if it doesn't happen, that's fine too. Perhaps I won't throw a party then; I'll simply go home and keep writing.

I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.