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.
“The — the prophecy . . . the prediction . . . Trelawney . . .”“Ah, yes. How much did you relay to Lord Voldemort?”“Everything — everything I heard! That is why — it is for that reason — he thinks it means Lily Evans!”“The prophecy did not refer to a woman. It spoke of a boy born at the end of July —”“You know what I mean! He thinks it means her son, he is going to hunt her down — kill them all —” “If she means so much to you, surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?”“I have — I have asked him —”“You disgust me.”
“I’m not a freak. That’s a horrible thing to say." "That’s where you’re going. A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy ... weirdos, that’s what you two are..." "You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote the headmaster and begged him to take you.”
“Hang on. This Lord Voldything's back you say?... and now he's sending dismembers after you?... I see. Well that settles it, YOU CAN GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE BOY!”
“S’up, Figgy?”
“Oh, I'm going to kill Mundungus Fletcher!”
“Sirius — it’s me . . . it’s Peter . . . your friend . . . you wouldn’t . . .”Black kicked out and Pettigrew recoiled.“There’s enough filth on my robes without you touching them,” said Black.”
“Our Headmaster is taking a short break,' said Professor McGonagall, pointing at the Snape-shaped hole in the window.”
“Oh, there you are, Albus,' he said. 'You've been a very long time. Upset stomach?''No, I was merely reading the Muggle magazines,' said Dumbledore. 'I do love knitting patterns.”
“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”
“He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark.”
“Wow!” said Dennis, as though nobody in their wildest dreams could hope for more than being thrown into a storm-tossed, fathoms-deep lake, and pushed out of it again by a giant sea monster.”
“Can't stay long, Mother," he said. "I'm up front, the prefects have got two compartments to themselves-""Oh, are you a prefect, Percy?" said one of the twins, with an air of great surprise. "You should have said something, we had no idea.""Hang on, I think I remember him saying something about it," said the other twin. "Once-""Or twice-""A minute-""All summer-""Oh, shut up," said Percy the Prefect.”
“No good sittin' worryin' abou' it," he said. "What's comin' will come, an' we'll meet it when it does.”
“Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human —”“THEN — I — DON’T — WANT — TO — BE — HUMAN!” Harry roared.”
“He [Uncle Vernon] held up the envelope in which Mrs. Weasley’s letter had come, and Harry had to fight down a laugh. Every bit of it was covered in stamps except for a square inch on the front, into which Mrs. Weasley had squeezed the Dursleys’ address in minute writing.“She did put enough stamps on, then,” said Harry, trying to sound as though Mrs. Weasley’s was a mistake anyone could make.”
“The fridge had been emptied of all Dudley’s favorite things — fizzy drinks and cakes, chocolate bars and burgers — and filled instead with fruit and vegetables and the sorts of things that Uncle Vernon called “rabbit food.”
“Constant vigilance!”
“There will be books written about Harry. Every child in the world will know his name.”
“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”
“I’d take that gum out of the keyhole if I were you, Peeves,” he said pleasantly. Peeves paid no attention to Professor Lupin’s words, except to blow a loud wet raspberry.Professor Lupin gave a small sigh and took out his wand.“This is a useful little spell,” he told the class over his shoulder. “Please watch closely.”He raised the wand to shoulder height, said, “Waddiwasi!” and pointed it at Peeves.With the force of a bullet, the wad of chewing gum shot out of the keyhole and straight down Peeves’s left nostril; he whirled upright and zoomed away, cursing.“Cool, sir!” said Dean Thomas in amazement.“Thank you, Dean,” said Professor Lupin, putting his wand away again. “Shall we proceed?”
“Go on, have a pasty," said Harry, who had never had anything to share before or, indeed, anyone to share it with. It was a nice feeling, sitting there with Ron, eating their way through all Harry's pasties, cakes, and candies (the sandwiches lay forgotten).”
“You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you’ll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no . . . anything. There’s no chance at all of recovery. You’ll just — exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever . . . lost.”
“Don’ you worry, Harry. You’ll learn fast enough. Everyone starts at the beginning at Hogwarts, you’ll be just fine. Just be yerself. I know it’s hard. Yeh’ve been singled out, an’ that’s always hard. But yeh’ll have a great time at Hogwarts — I did — still do, ’smatter of fact.”
“I never know," Harry called to Hagrid over the noise of the cart, "What's the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite?""Stalagmite's got an 'm' in it," said Hagrid.”
“That's chess!" snapped Ron. "You've got to make some sacrifices!”
“Another ten points from Gryffindor,” said Snape. “I would expect nothing more sophisticated from you, Ronald Weasley, the boy so solid he cannot Apparate half an inch across a room.”
“He lay face down, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself. ”
“Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here. ”
“Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive, and more aware of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone...or at least, he would be gone from it. His breath came slow and deep, and his mouth and throat were completely dry, but so were his eyes.”
“Yeah, well, food's one of the five exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfigurations," said Ron, to general astonishment.”
“The wizards represent all that the true 'muggle' most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit!”
“He yearned not to feel... He wished he could rip out his heart, his innards, everything that was screaming inside him...”
“Tut, tut — fame clearly isn't everything.”
“Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.”
“I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself”
“The elf’s eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words.‘Harry... Potter...’And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great, glassy orbs sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see.”
“A red-gold glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort's was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco's wand:"Avada Kedavra!""Expelliarmus!"The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort's green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last.”
“Yes, my tiara sets off the whole thing nicely," said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. "But I must say, Ginevra's dress is far too low-cut."Ginny glanced round, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again.”
“Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,Teach us something please,Whether we be old and bald,Or young with scabby knees,Our heads could do with fillingWith some interesting stuff,For now they're bare and full of air,Dead flies and bits of fluff,So teach us something worth knowing,Bring us back what we've forgot,Just do your best, we'll do the rest,And learn until our brains all rot...”
“Enter, stranger, but take heedOf what awaits the sin of greed,For those who take, but do not earn,Must pay most dearly in their turn,So if you seek beneath our floorsA treasure that was never yours,Thief, you have been warned, bewareOf finding more than treasure there.”
“Ron gave a tiny jerk of the head that Harry understood to mean, Well - if you must.”
“It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love.”
“An Unbreakable Vow?" said Ron, looking stunned. "Nah, he can’t have.... Are you sure?""Yes I’m sure," said Harry. "Why, what does it mean?""Well, you can’t break an Unbreakable Vow...""I’d worked that much out for myself, funnily enough.”
“Xenophilius Lovegood," he said, extending a hand to Harry. "My daughter and I live over the hill, so kind of the Weasleys to invite us. I think you know my Luna?" he added to Ron."Yes" said Ron. "Isn't she with you?""She lingered in that charming little garden to say hello to the gnomes, such a glorious infestation! How few wizards realize just how much we can learn from the wise little gnomes — or, to give then their correct names, the Gernumbli gardensi.""Ours do know a lot of excellent swear words," said Ron, "but I think Fred and George taught them those.”
“Ooh, you look much tastier than Crabbe and Goyle, Harry" said Hermione, before catching sight of Ron's raised eyebrows, blushing slightly and saying "oh you know what I mean - Goyle's Potion looked like bogies.”
“There was a brief silence in which the distant echo of Hagrid smashing down a wooden front door seemed to reverberate through the intervening years.”
“Voldemort,” said Riddle softly, “is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter. . . .”He pulled Harry’s wand from his pocket and began to trace it through the air, writing three shimmering words:TOM MARVOLO RIDDLEThen he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name rearranged themselves:I AM LORD VOLDEMORT”
“Lily and James only made you Secret-Keeper because I suggested it,” Black hissed, so venomously that Pettigrew took a step backward. “I thought it was the perfect plan... a bluff... Voldemort would be sure to come after me, would never dream they’d use a weak, talentless thing like you... It must have been the finest moment of your miserable life, telling Voldemort you could hand him the Potters.”
“Was it—was she making a real prediction?'Dumbledore looked mildly impressed.'Do you know, Harry, I think she might have been,' he said thoughtfully. 'Who'd have thought it? That brings her total of real predictions up to two. I should offer her a pay raise...”
“The hippogriff took off into the air. . . . He and his rider became smaller and smaller as Harry gazed after them . . . then a cloud drifted across the moon. . . . They were gone.”