“Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.”
Failure
“I'm interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society.We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it's quite a satisfying thing to do, isn't it?”
SocietyAll Quotes by J. K. Rowling
“Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can't really understand why it doesn't obsess everyone - I think it does really, I'm just a little more out about it.”
Death“'Harry Potter' gave me back self respect. Harry gave me a job to do that I loved more than anything else.”
Respect“If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work.”
Work“The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.”
Famous“I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
Fear“I received free health care.”
Health“No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn't sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours' writing. Nothing.”
Business“I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.”
Famous“Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.”
Failure“I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.”
Dreams“Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.”
Trust“The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day's work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.”
Work“Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”
Fear“His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.”
Knowledge“However 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 quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.”
Imagination“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”
Imagination“Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.”
Intelligence“Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.”
Poetry“I don't read 'chick lit,' fantasy or science fiction but I'll give any book a chance if it's lying there and I've got half an hour to kill.”
Science