Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.

Dobby is a free elf, and Dobby has come to save Harry Potter and his friends!

You could say sorry," suggested Harry bluntly. "What, and get attacked by another flock of canaries?" muttered Ron. "What did you have to imitate her for?" "She laughed at my mustache!" "So did I, it was the stupidest thing I've ever seen.

By the time she had interpreted Harry's dreams at the top of her voice (all of which, even the ones that involved eating porridge, apparently foretold a gruesome and early death), he was feeling much less sympathetic toward her.

You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that be must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.

Naturally Shirley had known, as they slid stock words and phrases back and forth between them like beads on an abacus, that Howard must be as brimful of ecstasy as she was; but to express these feelings out loud, when the news of death was still fresh in the air, would have been tantamount to dancing naked and shrieking obscenities, and Howard and Shirley were clothed, always, in an invisible layer of decorum that they never laid aside.

Harry, you wonderful boy, you brave, brave man.