J.K. Rowling
See also: Robert Galbraith
Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly.
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.
Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind," gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.
Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn’t particularly happy. I think it’s a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English." Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books.
“They reached their familiar, circular dormitory with its five four-poster beds, and Harry, looking around, felt he was home at last.”
“The moment when Harry takes Draco's wand... I think it really puts the elaborate, grandiose plans of Dumbledore and Voldemort in their place. That actually the history of the wizarding world hinged on two teenage boys wrestling with each other. They weren't even using magic. It became an ugly little corner tussle for the possession of wands.”
“But sometimes she found that memory confusing and doubted it.”
“I uprooted my daughter and left my job and moved house for you, and you treat me like a hooker you don’t have to pay.”
“She tamped down the awful urge to cry with a fierceness that her mother had always deplored, especially in the wake of her father’s death, when her other daughters, and the aunts and cousins, were all wailing and beating their breasts. ‘And you were his favourite too!’ But 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, disgorged periodically at her children and the receptionists at work.”
“Her grief was so big and wild it terrified her, like an evil beast that had erupted from under the floorboards.”
“And together they walked back through the gateway to the Muggle world.”
“Harry constantly repeated Dumbledore's final words to himself. "I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. ... Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it. "But what good were these words? Who exactly were they supposed to ask for help, when everyone was just as confused and scared as they were?”
“I think I'd better do the actual stealing," Hermione continued in a matter-of-fact tone. "You two will be expelled if you get into anymore trouble, and I've got a clean record. So all of you need to do is cause enough mayhem to keep Snape busy for five minutes or so.”
“I'm not going anywhere!" said Harry fiercely. "One of my best friends is Muggle-born; she'll be first in line if the Chamber really has been opened...”
“Dear Ron, and Harry if you're there,"I hope everything went all right and that Harry is okay and that you didn't do anything illegal to get him out, Ron, because that would get Harry into trouble, too.I've been really worried and if Harry is all right, will you please let me know at once, but perhaps it would be better if you used a different owl, because I think another delivery might finish your one off.I'm very busy with my schoolwork, of course' ---'and we're going to London next Wednesday to buy my new books. Why don't we meet in Diagon Alley?Let me know what's happening as soon as you can. Love from Hermione.”
“Extremely unusual though he was, at that moment Harry Potter felt just like everyone else: glad, for the first time in his life, that it was his birthday.”
“With another shock of excitement, Harry saw Sirius give James the thumbs-up.Sirius was lounging in his chair at his ease, tilting it back on two legs. He was very good-looking, his dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance neither James's nor Harry's could ever have achieved, and a girl sitting behind him was eyeing him hopefully, though he didn't seem to have noticed.”
“All she had left of her old life and her old uncertainties was attacking familiar targets.”
“Mostly they laughed because they laughed, feeding off each other until they could barely stand.”
“When she tallied kindness she subtracted abandonment.”
“You felt that she wanted things to go right for you, and not only for the forms.”
“Once, long ago, Parminder had told Barry the story of Bhai Kanhaiya, the Sikh hero who had administered to the needs of those wounded in combat, whether friend or fo. When asked why he gave aid indiscriminately, Bahai Kanhaiya had replied that the light of God shone from every soul, and that he had been unable to distinguish between them.”
“The habit of secrecy was very strong in her these days.”
“Wordlessly, Kay stroked his arm, reflecting that she had never been able to afford to go to pieces.”
“She remembered telling a sturdy little girl in guidance that looks did not matter, that personality was much more important. What rubbish we tell children [...].”
“Shirley took the view that the past disintegrated if you never mentioned it.”
“Krystal hated folders. All the stuff they wrote about you, and kept, and used against you afterwards.”
“A life of ease and plenty dangled over his head like a great bulging pinata, which he might smash open if only he had a stick big enough, and the knowledge of when to strike. Simon had the child's belief that the rest of the world exists as staging for their personal drama; that destiny hung over him, casting clues and signs in his path, and he could not help feeling that he had been vouchsafed a sign, a celestial wink.”
“He was born with a weakness he didn't know about.”
“Most of them were devoid of workaday morals; they lied, misbehaved and cheated routinely, and yet their fury when wrongly accused was limitless and genuine.”
“They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life.”
“I'll understand, of course, if you want to stay with your aunt and uncle,' said Sirius. 'But...well...think about it. Once my name's cleared...if you wanted a...a different home...' Some sort of explosion took place in the pit of Harry's stomach. 'What - live with you?' he said, accidentally cracking his head on a bit of rock protruding from the ceiling. 'Leave the Dursleys?' 'Of course. I thought you wouldn't want to' said Sirius quickly. 'I understand. I just thought I'd -' 'Are you mad?' said Harry, his voice easily as croaky as Sirius. 'Of course I want to leave the Dursleys! Have you got a house? When can I move in?”
“Think your little jokes'll help you on your deathbed?" she jeered."Jokes? No,no, these are manners," replied Dumbledore.”
“Wand of elder, never prosper.”
“Why do you live?Because I have something worth living for.”
“There will always be a easy path and a right path.”
“And anyway, life's too short....”
“Stop, stop, stop, you're going to poke someone's eye out!”
“There will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.”
“You can't cancel Quidditch!”
“No, nothing,' said Dumbledore, and a great sadness filled his face. 'The time is long gone when I could frighten you with a burning wardrobe and force you to make repayment for your crimes. But I wish I could, Tom... I wish I could....”
“Ministry of Magic (M.O.M) Classification.xxxxx Known wizard killer / impossible to train or domesticate / or anything Hagrid likes”
“Wenn wir träumen, betreten wir eine Welt, die ganz und gar uns gehört. <3”
“Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him.”
“This is your copy of Advanced Potion-Making, is it, Potter?”“Yes,” said Harry, still breathing hard.“You’re quite sure of that, are you, Potter?”“Yes,” said Harry, with a touch more defiance.“This is the copy of Advanced Potion-Making that you purchased from Flourish and Blotts?”“Yes,” said Harry firmly.“Then why,” asked Snape, “does it have the name ‘Roonil Wazlib’ written inside the front cover?”Harry’s heart missed a beat. “That’s my nickname,” he said.”
“You seem to be drowning twice," said Hermione."Oh, am I?" said Ron peering down at his predictions. "I'd better change one of them to getting trampled by a rampaging Hippogriff.”
“Abundance is the quality of life you live and quality of life you give to others.”
“Andrew indulged in a little fantasy in which his father dropped dead, gunned down by an invisible sniper. Andrew visualised himself patting his sobbing mother on the back while he telephoned the undertaker. He had a cigarette in his mouth as he ordered the cheapest coffin.”
“He dreamed of London and of a life that mattered.”
“Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale.”
“Prongs rode again last night.”
“As a sobbing Wood passed Harry the Cup, as he lifted it into the air, Harry felt he could have produced the world's best Patronus.”
“I knew it! I knew it! ”“Are we allowed to speak yet?” said Ron grumpily. Hermione ignored him.“Nicolas Flamel,” she whispered dramatically, “is the only known maker of the Philosopher's Stone!”This didn’t have quite the effect she’d expected.“The what?” said Harry and Ron.“Oh, honestly, don’t you two read? Look — read that, there.”
“He didn’t know what he was going to — but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind.”