J. K. Rowling Writing Quotations

No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn't sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours' writing. Nothing.

People ask me if there are going to be stories of Harry Potter as an adult. Frankly, if I wanted to, I could keep writing stories until Harry is a senior citizen, but I don't know how many people would actually want to read about a 65 year old Harry still at Hogwarts playing bingo with Ron and Hermione.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

I've been writing my entire life, and I'll always write.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day's work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

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.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don't know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I'd written, I don't want to leave that behind.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

There appears to be something to do with vehicles and movement that stimulates my writing.

I've been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don't need to write a book for adults.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do ever - was write novels.

It's just hard," Harry said finally, in a low voice, "to realize he won't write me again

Yes, it has made me happier. Finishing them has made me happier. Before I wrote the Potter books, I'd never finished a novel. I came close to finishing two.

I imagine them very clearly and then attempt to describe what I can see. Sometimes I draw them for my own amusement! (talking about her characters and scenes)

I can write anywhere. I made up the names of the characters on a sick bag while I was on an airplane. I told this to a group of kids and a boy said, "Ah, no, that's disgusting." And I said, "Well, I hadn't used the sick bag."

During the first five years that I was writing the series, I made plans and wrote small pieces of all the books. I concentrate on one book at a time, though occasionally I will get an idea for a future book and scribble it down for future reference.

I write nearly every day. Some days I write for ten or eleven hours. Other days I might only write for three hours. It really depends on how fast the ideas are coming.

I want to fall in love with something in the way I fell in love with the idea of Harry before I write anything else.

I won't say 'never,' but I have no plans to write an eighth book.

But in some ways I think it's braver to do it like this. And, to an extent, you know what? The worst that can happen is that everyone says, 'Well, that was dreadful, she should have stuck to writing for kids' and I can take that. So, yeah, I'll put it out there, and if everyone says, 'Well, that's shockingly bad – back to wizards with you', then obviously I won't be throwing a party. But I will live. I will live.

Often, you have to fail as a writer before you write that bestselling novel or ground-breaking memoir. If you're failing as a writer - which it definitely feels like when you're struggling to write regularly or can't seem to earn a living as a freelance writer - maybe you need to take a long-term perspective.

If someone asked for my recipe for happiness, step one would be finding out what you love most in the world and step two would be finding someone to pay you to do it. I consider myself very lucky indeed to be able to support myself by writing.

Read as much as you possibly can. Nothing will help you as much as reading.

Be ruthless about protecting writing days....althoug h writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it...

He [Uncle Vernon] held up the envelope in which Mrs. Weasley’s letter had come, and Harry had to fight down a laugh. Every bit of it was covered in stamps except for a square inch on the front, into which Mrs. Weasley had squeezed the Dursleys’ address in minute writing. “She did put enough stamps on, then,” said Harry, trying to sound as though Mrs. Weasley’s was a mistake anyone could make.

I'm sure that I'll never have another success like Harry Potter for the rest of my life, no matter how many books I write, and no matter whether they're good or bad.

Every writer prefers good reviews over bad ones, and every writer wants to have lots of readers. But if it doesn't happen, that's fine too. Perhaps I won't throw a party then; I'll simply go home and keep writing.

I think that emotionally, I've probably felt a little bit more balanced when I started writing again.

I've been writing my entire life, and I'll always write. But at times I have told myself that I don't necessarily have to publish anything else.

There's always room for a story that can transport people to another place.

I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I'm in good company there.

You have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that's just the way it is. It's like learning an instrument, you've got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot, cause I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with. And read a lot. Reading really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on.

I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them.

I've only suffered writer's block badly once, and that was during the writing of Chamber of Secrets. I had my first burst of publicity about the first book and it paralysed me. I was scared the second book wouldn't measure up, but I got through it!

I didn't write with a target audience in mind. What excited me was how much I would enjoy writing about Harry. I never thought about writing for children - children's books chose me. I think if it is a good book anyone will read it.

Read a lot. Reading really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on.

In truth, I never consider the audience for whom I'm writing. I just write what I want to write.

Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance.

There is no part of me that feels that I represented myself as your children’s babysitter or their teacher. I was always, I think, completely honest. I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

You should write a book," Ron told Hermione as he cut up his potatoes, "translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them.

I've been writing since I was six. It is a compulsion, so I can't really say where the desire came from; I've always had it. My breakthrough with the first book came through persistence, because a lot of publishers turned it down!

You can have a very intense relationship with fictional characters because they are in your own head.

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.

Be ruthless about protecting writing days.

I think they thought it was very arrogant of me to write the end of my seven books series when I didn't have a publisher and no-one had heard of me

If you are writing children's books, you need to be a ruthless killer.

I'm not writing to make anyone's children feel safe.

What you write becomes who you are… So make sure you love what you write!

I'm not so naive that I didn't know or didn't suspect that, at some point, someone was going to say "You're writing about the occult." My wizarding world is a world of imagination. I think it is a moral world.

I have to write the story I want to write. I never wrote them with a focus group of 8-year-olds in mind. I have to continue telling the story the way I want to tell it.

I don't feel quite normal if I haven't written for a while. I doubt I will ever again write anything as popular as the "Harry" books, but I can live with that thought quite easily. By the time I stop writing about Harry, I will have lived with him for 13 years, and I know it's going to feel like a bereavement. So I'll probably take some time off to grieve, and then on with the next book!

No, there's no University for Wizards. At the moment I'm only planning to write seven Harry Potter books. I won't say "never," but I have no plans to write an eighth book.

I had the idea of a boy who was a wizard and didn't yet know what he was. I never sat down and wondered, "What shall I write about next?". It just came, fully formed.

I loved writing Dumbledore and he is the epitome of goodness.

Whatever job I had, I was always writing like crazy. All I ever liked about offices was being able to type up stories on the computer when no one was looking. I was never paying much attention in meetings because I was usually scribbling bits of my latest stories in the margins of the pad or thinking up names for my characters. This is a problem when you're supposed to be taking minutes of the meeting.

I’ll make Goyle do lines, it’ll kill him, he hates writing,” said Ron happily. He lowered his voice to Goyle’s low grunt and, screwing up his face in a look of pained concentration, mimed writing in midair. “I... must... not... look... like... a... baboon’s... backside.

Hermione drew herself to her full height; her eyes were narrowed and her hair seemed to crackle with electricity. "No," she said, her voice quivering with anger, "but I will write to your mother.

Harry: This book belongs to Harry Potter. Ron: Shared by Ron Weasley, because his fell apart. Hermione: Why don't you buy a new one then? Ron: Write on your own book, Hermione. Hermione: You bought all those dungbombs on Saturday. You could have bought a new book instead. Ron: Dungbombs rule.

She can't keep writing about what a tragic little hero I am, it'll get boring.

Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, “Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless — discuss.

I'll be writing until I can't write anymore. It's a compulsion with me. I love writing.

You have to kill a lot of trees before you write anything good.

I think writing about the time in Hermione’s life that I write about – growing from childhood into womanhood, literally, I think it brought back to me how very difficult it is.So much is expected of you as you become a woman, and often you are asked to sacrifice parts of you in becoming a girl, I would say. Hermione doesn’t.