I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.
I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.
On the subject of literary genres, I've always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I'd love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse...
I don't read 'chick lit,' fantasy or science fiction but I'll give any book a chance if it's lying there and I've got half an hour to kill.
Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.
Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.
I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I...
If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.
I think you're working and learning until you die.
'Harry Potter' gave me back self respect. Harry gave me a job to do that I loved more than anything else.
There is a room in the Department of Mysteries, that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces...
The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.
I do get recognized, but I must say Edinburgh is a fantastic city to live if you're well-known. There is an innate respect for privacy in Edinburgh people, and I also think they're used to seeing me w...
The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.
I don't think I am evangelical in my work.
I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.
Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.
Wild! Ron said, twiddling the replay knob on the side. I can make that old bloke down there pick his nose again... and again... and again...
If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work.