Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought it was about to happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the thing itself: his will to live had always been so much stronger than his fear of death.

Parminder kept her unwept tears locked tightly inside where they seemed to undergo an alchemical transformation, returning to the outer world as lava slides of rage.

Love is the most powerful thing of all and I remember thinking that - God, I'm about to make myself cry but, I remember thinking that when 9/11 happened because those last phone calls were about - the last thing knowingly, that I'm going to say on this earth is "I love you". What's more powerful than that? What's more proof than that? Beyond fear, beyond death.

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.

For in dreams we enter a world that is entirely our own. Let them swim in the deepest ocean or glide over the highest cloud.

I think what is probably hard for people to imagine is how wrapped up the 17 years' work on Harry Potter is with what was going on in my life at the time. I was mourning the loss of this world that I had written for so long and loved so much. I was also mourning the retreat it had been from - from ordinary life, which it has been. And it forced me to look back at 17 years of my life and remember things.

Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you've a ready mind, Where those of wit and learning, Will always find their kind.