"She kind of has a boyfriend on this one, which for Ron and Harry is a bit of a shock really…Especially for Ron who just realised she’s a girl."

"I have loads of great memories… Trying to irritate Dan by constantly prodding my staff on his big toe."

"[about Draco’s full black suit in the Battle of Hogwarts] I don’t quite know why he would wear that to a battle. It seems an odd thing to be wearing to war, but he looks sharp, I guess."

Interviewer: The moment when Harry said, ‘I realize this, and my parents realized this, and this is about this choice,’ we stopped, and we said, “All right, let’s let everyone catch up, and talk about this, because a) Dumbledore is dying, b) this is the flag that signals that we’re going to power through to the end.” I feel like that was a defining moment of the entire series. Do you tend to agree?

JK Rowling: Yes, definitely, because I think there’s a line there between the moment in “Chamber of Secrets” when Dumbledore says so famously, ‘It’s our choices that define us, not our abilities,’ straight through to Dumbledore sitting in his office, saying to Harry, “the prophecy is significant only because you and Voldemort choose to make it so.” If you both chose to walk away, you could both live! That’s the bottom line. If both of them decided, “We’re not playing,” and walked away… but, it’s not going to happen, because as far as Voldemort’s concerned, Harry’s a threat. They must meet each other.

JK Rowling: One of the ways in which I tried to show that Harry has done a lot of growing up — in “Phoenix,” remember when Cho comes into the compartment, and he thinks, ‘I wish I could have been discovered sitting with better people,’ basically? He’s with Luna and Neville. So literally the identical thing happens in “Prince,” and he’s with Luna and Neville again, but this time, he has grown up, and as far as he’s concerned he is with two of the coolest people on the train. They may not look that cool. Harry has really grown.

Interviewer: Of the many things you must have heard people say about Harry Potter, what are some of your favorites?

JK Rowling: My very favourite was from a 12-year-old Scottish girl who came to hear me read at the Edinburgh book festival. The event was sold out and the queue for signing at the end was very long. When the girl in question finally reached me she said, “I didn’t WANT there to be so many people here, because this is MY book!” That is exactly how I feel about my favourite books— nobody else has a right to know them, let alone like them!

When he’d been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were his only family, Yet sometimes he thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Harry furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Harry tried to get a closer look.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter One

"[On Rupert] He’s just like a big kid really, I’ll miss him making me laugh."

"Emma had finished at her table before Rupert had finished with us, so she came over, stood behind him and rested her chin on his shoulder as she said ‘Hi!’. It was adorable."

"Rupert and I printed out loads of these notes, stuff like ‘pull my hair’, ‘kick me’, ‘i’m thick’, - we cut out, I don’t know, about ten of them and stuck them all over Dan’s back without him noticing!"

"Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursley’s had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursley’s front door; crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr Dursley had seen that fateful news report about owls."

"He couldn’t know that all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: ‘To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!’"

"Harry Potter rolled over in his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours’ time by Mrs Dursley’s scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley… He couldn’t know that all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: ‘To Harry Potter - the boy who lived!’"

"When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country."