“Birth and death: there was the same consciousness of heightened existence and of her own elevated importance”

“It's the same story with a few crucial additions; the most important one is you.”

“By the time she had interpreted Harry's dreams at the top of her voice (all of which, even the ones that involved eating porridge, apparently foretold a gruesome and early death), he was feeling much less sympathetic toward her.”

“My readers have to work with me to create the experience. They have to bring their imaginations to the story. No one sees a book in the same way, no one sees the characters the same way. As a reader you imagine them in your own mind. So, together, as author and reader, we have both created the story.”

“Snape's patronus was a doe,' said Harry, 'the same as my mother's because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from when they were children.”

“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.”

“She navigated away from the Parish Council message board and dropped into her favorite medical website, where she painstakingly entered the words "brain" and "death" in the search box.The suggestions were endless. Shirley scrolled through the possibilities, her mild eyes rolling up and down, wondering to which of these deadly conditions, some of them unpronounceable, she owed her present happiness.”