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• The wizards represent all that the true 'muggle' most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit!
  • Salon (31 March 1999)

• I absolutely did not start writing these books to encourage any child into witchcraft... I'm laughing slightly because to me, the idea is absurd.
  I have met thousands of children now, and not even one time has a child come up to me and said, "Ms. Rowling, I'm so glad I've read these books because now I want to be a witch." They see it for what it is... It is a fantasy world and they understand that completely.
  • As quoted in "Success of Harry Potter bowls author over" at CNN.com (21 October 1999) ; also quoted in "Urban Legends Reference Pages : Harry Potter" at Snopes.com

• I don't believe in magic, either.
  • As quoted in "Success of Harry Potter bowls author over" at CNN.com (21 October 1999)

• I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? 'You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!'
  'Well,' I said, slightly nonplussed, 'the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby.'
  What I felt like saying was, 'I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?' But no — my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!
  • "For Girls Only, Probably..." at her website in "Section: Extra Stuff".

• I've never set out to teach anyone anything. It's been more of an expression of my views and feelings than sitting down and deciding 'What is today's message?' And I do think that, although I never, again, sat down consciously and thought about this, I do think judging, even for my own daughter, that children respond to that than to 'thought for the day.'
  • Interview by Lizo Mzimba (February 2003)

• If you need to tell your readers something...there are only two characters that you can put it convincingly into their dialogue. One is Hermione, the other is Dumbledore. In both cases you accept, it's plausible that they have, well Dumbledore knows pretty much everything anyway, but that Hermione has read it somewhere. So, she's handy.
  • Interview by Lizo Mzimba (February 2003)

• I've given you more than I've given anyone else which I probably shouldn't probably say on — on screen, or they'll kidnap and torture him, and we need him.
  • To screenwriter Steve Kloves, in an interview by Lizo Mzimba (February 2003)

• It would be one way to kill off the merchandising.
  • On Newsnight, about the possibility of killing Harry in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, June 2003.

• And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
  • Harvard University Commencement Address (June 2008)

• We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
  • Harvard University Commencement Address (June 2008)

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• I think I'd most like to spend a day with Harry. I'd take him out for a meal and apologize for everything I've put him through.

• Personally, If I were Harry Potter I think I would go and hide somewhere, but that's because I know what's coming!

• It is important to remember that we all have magic inside us.

• Journalists banging on my front door! Don't like that at all.
  • When asked what parts of fame she least enjoyed