I had a deprived childhood, you see. I had lots of other kids to play with and my parents bought me outdoor toys and refused to ill-treat me, so it never occurred to me to seek solitary consolation with a good book.

If you don't know when to be a human being, you don't know when to be a witch.

If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.

The pamphlet was very patriotic. That is, it talked about killing foreigners.

Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.

You can't die with an unfinished book.

Be one of the crowd? It went against everything a wizard stood for, and a wizard would not stand for anything if he could sit down for it, but even sitting down, you had to stand out.