J. K. Rowling (b.1965,) fully Joanne Kathleen Rowling, is a British novelist. She is the creator of the immensely popular and critically acclaimed seven-part Harry Potter series, children’s fantasies about a young wizard at a magical school.
Born in Chipping Sodbury, near Bristol, Rowling studied at Exeter University and began her career as a teacher of English and French. She envisioned the idea of the Harry Potter series in the summer of 1990 while traveling on a train from Manchester to London. Rowling went to Portugal in 1991 to teach English; she worked her job in the afternoons and the evenings and devoted her mornings to writing.
Rowling’s first children’s book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997; film 2001,) was the first in a series of seven novels set in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was an astonishing triumph, as were its sequels: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998; film 2002,) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999; film 2004,) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000; film 2005,) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003; film 2007,) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005; film 2009,) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007; film 2010–11.)
Rowling also published The Casual Vacancy (2012,) a novel for adults, and, in 2013, began publishing detective stories under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith about private investigator Cormoran Strike.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by J. K. Rowling
We must try not to sink beneath our anguish… but battle on.
—J. K. Rowling
Topics: Adversity
Time is making fools of us again.
—J. K. Rowling
Topics: Time
After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. You know, the Stone was not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life and you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all—the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.
—J. K. Rowling
Topics: Death
It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
—J. K. Rowling
Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.
—J. K. Rowling
Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.
—J. K. Rowling
Topics: Thinking, Optimism
According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scarring than almost anything else … .
—J. K. Rowling
Topics: Mind
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
—J. K. Rowling
It matters not what a person is born, but who they choose to be.
—J. K. Rowling
Nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas.
—J. K. Rowling
Topics: Night
It’s a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.
—J. K. Rowling
Topics: Time
Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.
—J. K. Rowling
Topics: Understanding
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
—J. K. Rowling
Topics: Failure, Resilience
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Rudyard Kipling British Children’s Books Writer
Mary Wollstonecraft English Writer, Feminist
C. S. Lewis Irish-born Author, Scholar
Ouida (Maria Louise Rame) English Novelist
P. D. James British Novelist
Russell Hoban American Author
Louise Erdrich American Children’s Books Writer
Ursula K. Le Guin Science-fiction writer
A. A. Milne British Humorist, Children’s Writer
Isaac Asimov American Novelist, Critic, Popular Scientist