Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously, that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case you have failed by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never obtained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things that I could not have learned any other way. I discovered I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected.

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.

October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.

I've been writing my entire life, and I'll always write. But at times I have told myself that I don't necessarily have to publish anything else.

One more lesson like that and I might just do a Weasley.

In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.

Witness for the defense, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.