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.
“Well, usually when a person shakes their head,” said McGonagall coldly, “they mean ‘no.’ So unless Miss Edgecombe is using a form of sign language as yet unknown to humans...”
“My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?’ Dumbledore sighed, looking down into Snape’s ferocious, anguished face. ‘If you insist …”
“What you fear most of all is —fear. Very wise...”
“Bubotubers,” Professor Sprout told them briskly. “They need squeezing. You will collect the pus —”“The what?” said Seamus Finnigan, sounding revolted.“Pus, Finnigan, pus,” said Professor Sprout.”
“Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe.”
“What’s that?” said Ron, pointing at a large dish of some sort of shellfish stew that stood beside a large steak-and-kidney pudding.“Bouillabaisse,” said Hermione.“Bless you,” said Ron.“It’s French,” said Hermione.”
“I really feel that we're not giving children enough credit for distinguishing what's right and what's wrong. I, for one, devoured fairy tales as a little girl. I certainly didn't believe that kissing frogs would lead me to a prince, or that eating a mysterious apple would poison me, or that with the magical "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo" I would get a beautiful dress and a pumpkin carriage. I also don't believe that looking in a mirror and saying "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman" will make some awful serial killer come after me. I believe that many children recognize Harry Potter for what it is, fantasy literature. I'm sure there will always be some that take it too far, but that's the case with everything. I believe it's much better to engage in dialog with children to explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Then they are better equipped to deal with people who might have taken it too far.”
“Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty, thinking it's an insult to Cedric's memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can't work out what her feelings towards Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that's all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she's afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's flying so badly." A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode.”
“Like the fact that the person Sirius cared for the most about in the world was you," said Dumbledore quietly.”
“Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.”
“You don't know what I'm capable of, you don't know what I've done!”
“No, it was honest," said Harry. "One of the only honest things you've said to me. You don't care whether I live or die, but you do care that I help you convince everyone you're winning the war against Voldemort.”
“So then I thought, I'd like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you ever meet some veela when you're off doing whatever you're doing.'I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.'There's a silver lining I've been looking for,' she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was a blissful oblivion, better than firewhiskey; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand on her back, the other in her long sweet-smelling hair...”
“I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them.”
“Finally, the truth. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive.”
“The silence was unbearable to him. If the pictures could have reflected the feelings inside him, they would have been screaming in pain.”
“If you made a better rat than a human, it’s not much to boast about, Peter.”
“I am what I am, an’ I’m not ashamed. 'Never be ashamed,’ my ol’ dad used ter say, ‘there’s some who’ll hold it against you, but they’re not worth botherin’ with.”
“Natürlich passiert es in deinem Kopf, Harry, aber warum um alles in der Welt sollte das bedeuten, dass es nicht wirklich ist?”
“I haven’t got the heart to take the mickey out of him, even,” said Fred, looking over at Ron’s crumpled figure. “Mind you . . . when he missed the fourteenth . . .”He made wild motions with his arms as though doing an upright doggy-paddle.“Well, I’ll save it for parties, eh?”
“Dinner, Nagini.”
“What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.”
“I’m a teacher! A teacher, Potter! How dare yeh threaten ter break down my door!”“I’m sorry, sir,” said Harry, emphasizing the last word.Hagrid looked stunned. “Since when have yeh called me ‘sir’?” “Since when have you called me ‘Potter’?”
“Hello' said a vague and dreamy voice from behind them. Harry looked up: Luna Lovegood had drifted over from the Ravenclaw table. Many people were staring at her and few people openly laughing and pointing; she had managed to procure a hat shaped like a life-size lion's head, which was perched precariously on her head.'I'm supporting Gryffindor' said Luna, pointing unnecessarily at her hat. "Look what it does...'She reached up and tapped the hat with her wand. It opened its mouth wide and gave an extremely realistic roar that made everyone in the vicinity jump.'It's good, isn't it?' said Luna happily. 'I wanted to have it chewing up a serpent to represent Slytherin, you know, but there wasn't time. Anyway...good luck, Ronald!”
“I don't mean to be rude—" he began, in a tone that threatened rudeness in every syllable."Yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often," Dumbledore finished the sentence gravely.”
“You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?' called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed over the top of the shield. 'Above such brutality, are you?''We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom,' Dumbledore said calmly, continuing to walk towards Voldemort as though he had not a fear in the world, as though nothing had happened to interrupt his stroll up the hall. “Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit —''There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!' snarled Voldemort.'You are quite wrong,' said Dumbledore, still closing in upon Voldemort and speaking as lightly as though they were discussing the matter over drinks. 'Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness'.”
“What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed?" said Black, with a terrible fury in his face. "Only innocent lives, Peter!""You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew. "He would have killed me, Sirius!""THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!”
“When in doubt, go to the library.”
“I see you are —”“Dumbledore’s man through and through,” said Harry. “That’s right.”
“I'll fix it up with Mum and Dad, then I'll call you. I know how to use a fellytone now—""A telephone, Ron," said Hermione. "Honestly, you should take Muggle Studies next year...”
“No witch has ever claimed to own the Elder Wand. Make of that what you will.”
“If he doesn't stop trying to save your life he's going to kill you.”
“I cared more about your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act.”
“Merlin’s beard, what is Xenophilius Lovegood wearing? He looks like an omelet.”
“He sounds exactly like Moody," said Harry quietly, tucking the letter away again inside his robes. "'Constant vigilance!' You'd think I walk around with my eyes shut, banging off the walls....”
“I don’t believe him,” said Hermione in a very unsteady voice, the moment they were out of earshot of Hagrid. “I don’t believe him. I really don’t believe him. . . .”“Calm down,” said Harry.“Calm down!” she said feverishly. “A giant! A giant in the forest! And we’re supposed to give him English lessons! Always assuming, of course, we can get past the herd of murderous centaurs on the way in and out! I — don’t — believe — him!”
“Always the innocent are the first victims, so it has been for ages past, so it is now.”
“Oh, honestly, don't you two read?”
“Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”
“Well you seemed too busy to call him a prat and I thought someone should.”
“It was as though they had been plunged into a fabulous dream. This, thought Harry, was surely the only way to travel — past swirls and turrets of snowy cloud, in a car full of hot, bright sunlight, with a fat pack of toffees in the glove compartment...”
“Which way did they go, Peeves?" Filch was saying. "Quick, tell me." "Say 'please.'" "Don't mess with me, Peeves, now where did they go?" "Shan't say nothing if you don't say please," said Peeves in his annoying singsong voice. "All right- PLEASE." "NOTHING! Ha haaa! Told you I wouldn't say nothing if you didn't say please! Ha ha! Haaaaaa!" And they heard the sound of Peeves whooshing away and Filch cursing in rage.”
“What's that supposed to be anyway?" said Fred squinting at Dobby's painting. "Looks like a Gibbon with two black eyes!" "It's Harry," said George pointing at the back of the picture. "Says so on the back." "Good likeness," said Fred grinning.Harry threw his new homework diary at him.”
“His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,His hair is as dark as a blackboard.I wish he was mine, he's really divine,The hero who conquered the Dark Lord.”
“Soy un mago y no un babuino blandiendo un palo”
“No estoy preocupado, Harry - repuso el anciano con tono más firme, pese a que el agua estaba helada -. Estoy contigo.”
“That old berk," muttered Aberforth, taking another swig of mead. "Thought the sun shone out of my brother's every orifice, he did.”
“My parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.”
“Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I've met people who don't want to try for fear of failing.”
“Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?”