“Be led by your talent, not by your self-loathing; those other things you just have to manage.”

“I disagree.” She squeezed lovingly. “Your dad has always supported you. All of this negativity, this pent-up aggression and self-loathing—”“I hardly loathe myself. Have you seen my ass?”

“Such Excessive Preoccupation With The Faults Of Others Only Manages To Bring The Spotlight To Shine Bright On Whatever It Is You May Have Hiding Behind All Your Self Perceived Glory.”

“You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.”

“How in the name of Merlin's pants have you managed to get your hands on those Horcrux books?”

“When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you've worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn't particularly define you beyond those characteristics.Losing on the other hand, really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck?If you're willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are.”