If it's a good book, anyone will read it. I'm totally unashamed about still reading things I loved in my childhood.

Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own —” “That’s enough, Phineas,” said Dumbledore.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

It's just hard," Harry said finally, in a low voice, "to realize he won't write me again

I would rather die than betray his trust." "That's not saying much, seeing as you're already dead," Ron observed. "Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe," said Nearly Headless Nick in affronted tones.

... you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!

It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. . . .