“Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.”

Wherever I am, if I’ve got a book with me, I have a place I can go and be happy.

Don’t worry. You’re just as sane as I am.

There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.

Courtesy dictates that we offer fellow wizards the opportunity of denying us entry.

Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don’t think anyone could have made me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

Depression is deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it’s a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel.

Sometimes ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It’s a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works.

To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.

What’s most important in a friendship? Tolerance and loyalty.

Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again.

Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.

I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp.

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.

It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love.