J. K. Rowling

Odd words floated back to them over the hundreds of heads. "Nobility of spirit"..."intellectual contribution"..."greatness of heart"...It did not mean very much. It had little to do with Dumbledore as Harry had known him. He suddenly remembered Dumbledore's idea of a few words, "nitwit," "oddment," "blubber," and "tweak," and again had to suppress a grin.

There is no point in apportioning blame. What is done, is done.

Without cunning, there is no innovation. Without ambition, there is no accomplishment.

I'm going to keep going until I succeed — or die. Don't think I don't know how this might end. I've known it for years.

She seemed to think that one of the perks of marriage was that it gave you rights of comment and intrusion over single people's love lives.

He put his foot on one pedal, scooted a few yards and swung his other leg over the saddle. He soared left into the vertiginously sloping hillside road and sped, without touching his brakes ... The hedgerows and sky blurred; he imagined himself in a velodrome as the wind whipped his hair clean...

In the end, love wins. It does win. We know it wins. When a person dies, love isn’t turned off like a faucet. It is an amazingly resilient part of us.

But Colin's only understanding of love was of limitless loyalty, boundless tolerance.

When you were straight, evil thoughts and memories came pouring up out of the darkness inside you; buzzing black flies clinging to the insides of your skull.

Harry looked down and saw deep green mountains and lakes, coppery in the sunset.

Dumbledore paused, and although his voice remained light and calm, and he gave no obvious sign of anger, Harry felt a kind of chill emanating from him and noticed that the Dursleys drew very slightly closer together. “You did not do as I asked. You have never treated Harry as a son. He has known nothing but neglect and often cruelty at your hands. The best that can be said is that he has at least escaped the appalling damage you have inflicted upon the unfortunate boy sitting between you.

For future reference, Harry, it is raspberry...although of course, if I were a Death Eater, I would have been sure to research my own jam preferences before impersonating myself.

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?

This group had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty.

Snape was looking as though the first person to ask him for a Love Potion would be force-fed poison.

We all know that the people we love are mortal, we all know we’re mortal, we know it’s going to end; you cannot prepare yourself for it.

But I was willing to embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortality.

Trust me," he said. "I know what I'm doing... or at least" -- he strolled confidently to the door -- "Felix does.

Oh, come off it,” said Ron, striding over to her and whipping her results out of her hand. “Yep— ten ‘Outstandings’ and one ‘Exceeds Expectations’ at Defense Against the Dark Arts.” He looked down at her, half-amused, half-exasperated. “You’re actually disappointed, aren’t you?

No story lives unless someone wants to listen. So thank you, all of you.

Personally, I'd have welcomed a dementor attack. A deadly struggle for my soul would have broken the monotony nicely.