Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.

I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed - or worse, expelled. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed.

Did you see me disarm Hermione, Harry?" "Only once" said Hermione stung. "I got you loads more then you got me—" "I did not only get you once, I got you at least three times—" "Well if you're counting the one where you tripped over your own feet and knocked the wand out of my hand—

Where do vanished objects go?" "Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything," replied Professor McGonagall. "Nicely phrased," replied the eagle door knocker, and the door swung open.

Sometimes you have to stop trying to force it, walk away and let your subconscious show you the way. Fill up on life for a while.

Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. . . . It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different.

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 to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.