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.
“Her family half carried Terri Weedon back down the royal blue carpet, and the congregation averted its eyes.”
“She kept asking herself whether, if he had looked cleaner, she might have been more concerned; whether, on some subliminal level, she had confused his obvious signs of neglect with street-smartness, toughness and resilience.”
“I have given you your liberty, Lucius, is that not enough for you? But I have noticed that you and your family seem less than happy of late. . . . What is it about my presence in your home that displeases you, Lucius?”“Nothing — nothing, my Lord!”“Such lies, Lucius . . .”
“She had a way of moving that moved him as much as music, which was what moved him most of all. Surely the spirit animating that pearless body must be unusual too? Why would nature make a vessel like that, if not to contain something still more valuable?”
“No - no - no!" someone was shouting. "No! Fred! No!"And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.”
“He did not know or care whether they were wizards or Muggles, friends or foes; all he cared about was that a dark stain was spreading across Dobby's front, and that he had stretched out his thin arms to Harry with a look of supplication. Harry caught him and laid him sideways on the cool grass."Dobby, no, don't die, don't die -"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.”
“No, Harry, you listen," said Hermione. "We're coming with you. That was decided months ago - years, really.”
“Dumbledore was on his feet again, pale as any of the surrounding Inferi, but taller than any too, the fire dancing in his eyes; his wand was raised like a torch and from its tip emanated the flames, like a vast lasso, encircling them all with warmth.”
“Dumbledore raised his finger for silence, a silence which fell as though he had struck Uncle Vernon dumb.”
“Directly above them, framed in the doorway from the Brain Room, stood Albus Dumbledore, his wand aloft, his face white and furious. Harry felt a kind of electric charge surge through every particle of his body - they were saved.”
“Neville kicked aside the broken fragments of his own wand as they walked slowly toward the door. "My gran's going do kill be," said Neville thickly, blood spattering from his nose as he spoke, "dat was by dad's old wand...”
“At that moment, Harry fully understood for the first time why people said Dumbledore was the only wizard Voldemort had ever feared. The look upon Dumbledore's face as he stared down at the unconscious form of Mad-Eye moody was more terrible than Harry could have ever imagined. There was no benign smile upon Dumbledore's face, no twinkle in the eyes behind the spectacles. There was cold fury in every line of the ancient face; a sense of power radiated from Dumbledore as though he were giving off burning heat.”
“Karakarof spat onto the ground at Dumbledore's feet. In one swift movement, Hagrid seized the front of Karkaroff's furs, lifted him into the air, and slammed him against a nearby tree.”
“But Dobby shouted, "You shall not harm Harry Potter! ... He got up, face livid, and pulled out his wand, but Dobby raised a long, threatening finger. "You shall go now," he said fiercely, pointing down at Mr. Malfoy. "You shall not touch Harry Potter. You shall go now.”
“You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.”
“In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.”
“It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them.”
“She watched the stream of hot black liquid fall, and felt suddenly, painfully alive to what she had risked in overthrowing her life for the man walking away into the night with another woman.”
“Did you kiss?" asked Hermione briskly.Ron sat up so fast that he sent his ink bottle flying all over the rug. Disregarding this completely he stared avidly at Harry."Well?" he demanded.Harry looked from Ron's expression of mingled curiosity and hilarity to Hermione's slight frown, and nodded."HA!"Ron made a triumphant gesture with his fist an went into a raucous peal of laughter that made several timid-looking second years over beside the window jump. A reluctant grin spread over Harry's face as he watched Ron rolling around on the hearthrug. Hermione gave Ron a look of deep disgust and returned to her letter.”
“The realization of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow."I've got to go back, haven't I?""That is up to you.""I've got a choice?""Oh yes." Dumbledore smiled at him. "We are in King's Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to…let's say…board a train.""And where would it take me?""On," said Dumbledore simply.”
“In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.”
“Andrew returned to his contemplation of the dirty window with an ache in his heart and in his balls.”
“Things denied, things untold, things hidden and disguised.”
“That," said Harry, "is a really good question.”
“Harry...You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk.”
“According to Nietzche," said a sharp new voice, making them all jump, "philosophy is the biography of the philosopher.”
“Beside him, making scarcely a sound, walked James, Sirius, Lupin, and Lily, and their presence was his courage, and the reason he was able to keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
“First think of the person who lives in disguise,Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend,The middle of middle and the end of end?And finally give me the sound often heardDuring the search for a hard-to-find word.Now string them together, and answer me this,Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?”
“Studying the young woman’s long thin legs, Tessa wondered how different her life would have been if she had had legs like that. She could not help but suspect that it would have been almost entirely different.”
“He was slumped in the back, gazing out of the window, as though his parents were two people who had picked him up hitchhiking, connected to him merely by chance and proximity.”
“She was on edge, feeling that she might snap or cry at the smallest provocation.”
“Some of her self-hatred had oozed out with the blood.”
“Yes, well, principles are sometimes the problem, if you ask me,' said Miles. 'Often what's needed is a bit of common sense.''Which is the name people usually give to their prejudices,' rejoined Kay.”
“But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know that they all were?”
“Sukhvinder is easily discouraged and needs to have more faith in her abilities. There! You see? Your teacher is saying you dont try hard enough, Sukhvinder.”
“He had fought back with every weapon in his arsenal, being alternatively obtuse, evasive and pedantic, for it was wonderful how you could obscure an emotional issue by appearing to seek precision.”
“Sukhvinder wished that she could be more like Krystal: funny and tough; impossible to intimidate; always coming out fighting.”
“Tessa was convinced that it was a lie, and also that everything she had done in her life, telling herself that it was for the best, had been no more than blind selfishness, generating confusion and mess all around. But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know they all were?”
“It was strange how your brain could know what your heart refused to accept.”
“Gavin saw a grave purely as a marker for the place where a corpse was decomposing; a nasty thought, yet people took it into their heads to visit and bring flowers, as though it might yet recover.”
“Parminder's rage crashed over her like a tidal wave, dragging Sukhvinder with it, so that she was unable to find her feet or right herself.”
“If she could have died...if she could have disappeared forever...but the solid surface of things refused to dissolve around her, and her body, her hateful hermaphrodite's body, continued in its stubborn, lumpen way, to live...”
“He might have been encased in a thick glass bubble, so separate did he feel from his three dining companions. It was a sensation with which he was only too familiar, that of walking in a giant sphere of worry, enclosed by it, watching his own terrors roll by, obscuring the outside world.”
“Why was she always so craven, so apologetic? He had always seen Ruth as separate, good and untainted. As a child, his parents had appeared to him as starkly black and white, the one bad and frightening, the other good and kind. Yet as he had grown older, he kept coming up hard in his mind against Ruth's willing blindness, to her constant apologia for his father, to the unshakeable allegiance to her false idol.”
“Excellent, I think I see a few veela cousins,” said George, craning his neck for a better look. “They’ll need help understanding our English customs, I’ll look after them. . . .”“Not so fast, Your Holeyness,” said Fred, and darting past the gaggle of middle-aged witches heading the procession, he said, “Here — permettez-moi to assister vous,” to a pair of pretty French girls, who giggled and allowed him to escort them inside. George was left to deal with the middle-aged witches.”
“Time to sit down," Fred told Harry, "Or we're going to get run over by the bride.”
“Your Great-Aunt Muriel doesn't agree, I just met her upstairs while she was giving Fleur the tiara. "She said 'Oh dear, is this the muggle born?' and then, 'Bad posture, skinny ankles.'"Don't take it personally, she's rude to everyone," said Ron."Talking about Muriel?" inquired George, reemerging from the marquee with Fred. "Yeah, she's just told me my ears are lopsided. Old bat.”
“Always the tone of surprise.”
“Your hair is much too long, Ronald, for a moment I thought you were Ginevra.”
“Bidding the wizard farewell, he turned to his daughter, who held up her fingerand said, “Daddy, look — one of the gnomes actually bit me!”“How wonderful! Gnome saliva is enormously beneficial!” said Mr. Lovegood, seizing Luna’s outstretched finger and examining the bleeding puncture marks. “Luna, my love, if you should feel any burgeoning talent today — perhaps an unexpected urge to sing opera or to declaim in Mermish — do not repress it! You may have been gifted by the Gernumblies!”Ron, passing them in the opposite direction, let out a loud snort.”