The best way to get children excited about reading is to read to them from the beginning of their lives.

Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure.

How awful it was, thought Tessa, remembering Fats the toddler, the way tiny ghosts of your living children haunted your heart; they could never know, and would hate it if they did, how their growing was a constant bereavement.

The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, Potter... or at least, most minds are.

Would you like a cough drop Dolores?

I haven’t got the heart to take the mickey out of him, even,” said Fred, looking over at Ron’s crumpled figure. “Mind you . . . when he missed the fourteenth . . .” He made wild motions with his arms as though doing an upright doggy-paddle. “Well, I’ll save it for parties, eh?

Of all the trees we could've hit, we had to get one that hits back.