1. When J.K. Rowling began writing the novel that would become Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone in the early 1990s, she didn't see fame in her own crystal ball. "I
thought I'd written something that a handful of people might quite like," she said at a
press conference near the end of her recent North American tour. "So this has been
something of a shock."
The "this" she speaks of is the sudden and almost overwhelming fame that has
accompanied the unprecedented success of her Harry Potter series of books. The sort
of fame western society generally reserves for rock stars and well known actors, not
ever -- until now -- for authors of books for children.
Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born on July 31, 1966 in a town in England called
Chipping Sodbury. At present, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland with her daughter
Jessica, now age seven.
The level of fame she has achieved is not of her creation and, on hearing her speak,
not to her desire. She says that she's still learning to deal with it. "I'd say for the first
two years of me being in the paper -- I didn't call myself famous. I didn't think of
myself that way -- but for the first two years, I think I was in denial. I kept thinking it
would go away. It will go away."
Denial, however, wasn't getting her anywhere, nor, she says now, was it very
productive for her. "By the time of the third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban," which
came out around the time that Harry Potter made the cover of Time magazine, "I had
to accept that it probably wasn't going to go away any time soon. And that's probably
a healthier place to be. I mean, it will. At some point it's going to go away. That's the
nature of the game. And I truly believe that I will be happy. And I will have fond
memories of the time that I was famous."
Meanwhile, one of the positives of not being an onscreen celebrity is that she's not
often recognized in public when going about her everyday business, something that
has likely been helped by coloring the bright red hair that her readers first came to
associate with Harry Potter's creator, a more subdued dark blonde.
"People ask if I can walk down the street unmolested. Really easily. In Edinburgh it's
really exceptional for people to come up to me. So either people in Edinburgh are
really cool and pretend not to notice or want to leave you alone, or they genuinely
don't notice me. And I think probably that. So compared to an actress or a politician, I
really get nothing. It's just that to me it's a huge shock because I didn't expect to get
anything at all."

2. The fame that Harry has brought Rowling has made the normal level of interaction
between the author and her readers almost impossible. First there's the press
conference: very few authors have such pressing demands from the media that they're
even required. Then there are the readings. A very popular author might draw several
hundred fans to a well-promoted reading or signing. Rowling's level of popularity
makes bookstore readings practically unthinkable. So unthinkable, in fact, that on the
Canadian portion of her tour, Rowling did only three readings: one in Toronto and
two in Vancouver and all in venues generally reserved for sporting events and rock
concerts. Rowling acknowledges that she was nervous before the first one and that her
reading at Toronto's Skydome, "terrified me. I was terrified. I had to walk up three
steps before I got on the stage. I felt like I was walking to the guillotine. Then when I
was out there it was wonderful. Still scary, but wonderful."
Though reading to 16,000 adoring youngsters while a larger-than-lifesize image of
yourself is projected behind you on a jumbo monitor is quite different than reading to
a school group of 30 or even a few hundred, Rowling believes that "a reading still can
be a very intimate experience even if a lot of people are there. However, undeniably I
can't have as much one-to-one contact."
Demands on her schedule prohibit the former these days. "It's a battle for me. My post
bag, as you can imagine, is full with thousands and thousands and thousands of
requests to do readings in bookstores, to do signings in small bookstores and to visit
schools individually and I used to do that and it was the most fun I had apart from the
writing. But if I did do it that way now I'd never see my daughter, I'd never write
another book and probably wouldn't eat or sleep, so I have to cut my cloth. I can either
say, I won't do readings anymore, which I would really miss. Or I can do big readings
and reach a lot of people at once. And that's the way I've chosen to go. Next year I
probably won't be doing any readings. I just want to be writing. So, in a way, the
Skydome was just one big bang."
Though the Harry Potter series of books continue to top lists wherever they're made
and to outsell almost anything previously written, Rowling has disallowed any of this
to give itself texture in her writing. "I think I've been lucky in that I planned the series
so long ago that it's almost set in stone: not much can affect it. I'm still writing from
the plan I had in 1995."
Her original plan to write a set number of books in the Harry Potter series is the thing
that has kept her on course. "I want to finish these seven books and look back and
think that whatever happened -- however much this hurricane whirled around me -- I
stayed true to what I wanted to write. This is my Holy Grail: that when I finish writing
book seven, I can say -- hand on heart -- I didn't change a thing. I wrote the story I
meant to write. If I lost readers along the way, so be it, but I still told my story. The

3. one I wanted. Without permitting it to sound too corny, that's what I owe to my
characters. That we won't be deflected, either by adoration or by criticism."
Though the seeds of Harry had been sown as early as 1990, Rowling didn't put all of
the pieces together and start writing in earnest until the mid-1990s when she was
living in Edinburgh, Scotland, raising her daughter, Jessica, alone. Not able to afford
even a used typewriter -- let alone a computer -- Rowling wrote the earliest drafts
of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in longhand. "I knew I wanted to get
published. And, in truth, writing novels is something you have to believe in to keep
going. It's a fairly thankless job when no one is paying you to do it. And you don't
really know if it's ever going to get into the bookshops so I really did believe in it. But
I was also very realistic. I knew the odds were not on my side because, an unknown
author, you know? It's tough. It's tough the first time to get published, so I persevered.
I loved writing it and I felt that I just had to try."
The author has encouragement for others who would follow her path. "My feeling is,
if you really want to do it, you will do it. You will find the time. And it might not be
much time, but you'll make it. Obviously if you have homework or other activities,
you're not going to have huge amounts of time but if you really want to, you'll do it."
At the same time, she advises, don't expect it to be perfect the first time. "You have to
resign yourself to wasting lots of trees before you write anything really good. That's
just how it is. It's like learning an instrument. You've got to be prepared for hitting
wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot. That's just part of the learning process. And
read a lot. Reading a lot really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on."
About her own writing, Rowling says that, in some ways, she just writes what she sees
in her mind. "I have a very visual imagination. I see a situation and then I try to
describe it as vividly as I can. And I do love writing dialog. Dialog comes to me as
though I'm just overhearing a conversation."
The author maintains that she's not really surprised by the fact that adults enjoy her
books as much as children do. "When I write the books, I really do write them for me.
Very often I get asked, 'Who do you have in mind when you write? Is it your daughter
or is it the children you've met?' No. It's for me. Just for me. I'm very selfish: I just
write for me. So the humor in the books is really what I find funny."
It's perhaps not surprising that adults often ask Rowling for the secret formula of her
success. "I've never analyzed it that way and I think it would be dangerous for me to
start analyzing it or thinking that way. I don't want it to stop being fun and -- number
two -- I'm not sure I know," after all, she adds, "the correct people to ask are the
readers."

4. Harry was born "almost fully formed," says Rowling. "I didn't have to stop and think
very hard about my hero." It's for this reason, the author says, that the star quidditch
player of Hogwarts "isn't a Harriet instead of Harry." She laughs when she adds that,
"by the time I stopped to wonder, 'Why is it a boy?' it really was too late. He was very
dear to me as a boy and, of course, I had Hermione and I love Hermione. And they
couldn't do it without Hermione. Well, I feel she's a very strong character, but then
she's based on me."
As a child, Rowling was, "short, squat, very thick National Health glasses -- free
glasses that were like bottle bottoms -- that's why Harry wears glasses. I was shy. I
was a mixture of insecurities and very bossy. Very bossy to my sister but quite quiet
with strangers. Very bookish. Terrible at school. That whole thing about Harry being
able to fly so well is probably total wish fulfillment." Rowling adds that she would
have loved to discover that she could do something physical really well. And she was,
"never happier than when reading or writing." Rowling, "wanted to be a ballerina at
one brief point, which is embarrassing in retrospect because I was virtually spherical."
The film version of the first Harry Potter book recently went into production. Slated
for release in 2001, it's being directed by Chris Columbus who also worked
onBicentennial Man, Stepmom and other films of the warmly funny persuasion.
Rowling had initially balked at the possibility of a movie based on her books. It wasn't
until about two years after she'd first been approached about a film version that she
finally said yes. "Because I really did want the books to be well established before
anyone made a film version. But selfishly, I did want to live to see the film finished
because I just want to be able to watch quidditch," the soccer-like game played on
magical flying brooms at which Harry is quite adept.
Though they've only just started shooting, Rowling is excited about the film project
and, "my opinion has been asked about all sorts of things where I really didn't think
I'd ever be consulted. I'm grateful for that, obviously. But I'm also very aware that
that's not anything to do with me, it's really to do with the readers. I think they see me
as standing in front of about a million children wanting to see it done my way. So
that's what gives me any power I have. I have script approval and as of the present
moment the script looks great."
Rowling is optimistic that the movie version will be true to her book. "I mean, if
everything that was in the book were in the film -- we worked it out -- it would be
over three hours long. Goodness only knows what will happen if they try to film
[book] four." Because that book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is over 600
pages long.

5. The author says that, "when I met the scriptwriter for the first time, he was the person
I was most antagonistic towards without having met him because, you know, he was
going to butcher my baby. And the first thing he said to me was, 'Do you know who
my favorite character is?' and I really, really thought he was going to say Ron. I mean,
I love Ron, but Ron's very, very easy to love: everyone loves Ron. And I got tense
about it. And he said, 'Hermione' and -- predictably, I melted. I thought, 'If you get
Hermione we can work together.'"
Throughout the nearly incredible rise to popularity of the Harry Potter books, Rowling
has been asked if she was aware of being part of a crusade for reading and literacy.
She denies it, but not without some pride. "I wrote the book for me. I never expected
it to do this. That it's done it I think is wonderful. If I can honestly think that I've
created some readers then I feel I really wasn't taking up space on this earth and I feel
very, very, very proud. But I didn't set out to do that and my first loyalty, as I say, is to
the story as I wanted to write it." | October 2000
http://januarymagazine.com/profiles/jkrowling.html
JK Rowling Harry Potter Success Story: Do You Believe In
Yourself?
If you desire success as JK Rowling, the creator of the Harry Potter book series, which has made her the richest
writer ever, one question I will ask you is, “Do you believe in yourself?”
I have to ask you this question straight away because your success in achieving anything in life very much depends
on it. Take a minute or two to think about what you want to do or have already started doing and look at yourself, do
you feel you can do it? Are you convinced you could succeed at it?
Be honest to yourself now, if you think you are not intelligent, not smart, not skillful, not educated, not strong, or not
good enough; or that you do not have enough money, or connections, to enable you succeed on the project, please
don’t do it. It is better to go do something else because you will definitely fail in this.
I’m sorry if I sounded hash, but the truth is, you can never achieve success in anything without first having a strong
belief you could do it. It is not possible, because the road to success is packed with challenges that must be
surpassed to achieve it, and if you’re not sure you will succeed, you will easily give up against the very first difficulty
that comes up.
The way to success is like a journey from point A to B and in-between there are stages to contend with. Take for
example; you have this idea of creating a computer game. To get this game successfully into the market, it will need
to pass through certain processes, such as, designing, production, marketing, and distribution.
Success will not just come about because you desired to have a computer game, you will have to make it happen by
working out these processes.
But each of these processes or stages in your way to success comes with its challenges. You could have spent tons
of hours, working day and night for several months only to end up with a design that appears to be dead from the

6. start; a product only a handful of people seems to be interested in. If you didn’t have a strong belief in yourself and
your product, you would immediately pack it up.
Innumerable number of great dreams have prematurely ended at the foot of rejection, and million more people the
world over are everyday giving up on reaching success because the people they thought would believe in them and
support them on their projects are not forth coming.
Don’t expect everyone to believe in what you are doing, in fact, be prepared to be rejected. But don’t ever reject
yourself, your abilities and who you are!
You are unique and special in your own way. Don’t try to be someone else, and don’t get intimidated by other
people’s successes or achievements. If you believe strongly in yourself, soon other people will begin to believe in you
too, and you will also be celebrated.
Today, the name JK Rowling is widely known in many parts of the world for creating the Harry Potter series, but it
wasn’t so about a decade ago. In fact, in 1993 she was on welfare and tending a baby while she wrote her first novel,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Without doubt, she believed strongly in her book, which she started in 1990, and completed five years later. But not
many people thought she could succeed as a children’s book writer. Twelve publishers rejected the book before a
small London publisher finally accepted to take it on.
Even then, the editor of Bloomsbury (the publishing company), out of his doubt about the success of the book,
advised Rowling to get a day job as it was unlikely she would make money from it.
But Rowling’s belief in her work didn’t sway. The book was eventually published in 1997, with a print run of 1000, five
hundred of which distributed to libraries.
Following the release of the book, a series of events started playing out to catapult a once massively rejected author
into the world’s most successful and richest author today:
A couple of months after her book was published, she got a grant of £8000 from the Scottish Arts Council for her to
concentrate on her writing. And the following year she got a deal of $105,000 from Scholastic Inc. to publish the book
in the US.
Since then, Rowling and her Harry Potter Series novel have never looked back. They have leapt from one success to
another, beyond anyone’s imagination.
Harry Potter and the Goblet, the fourth in the series broke sales records both in the US and the UK when it was
released in 2000, selling three million copies in the first 48hrs in the US, and over three hundred and seventy
thousand in the first day in the UK.
The sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince equally shattered previous sales records for books the world
over when it hit nine million copies on the day it was released in 2005.
Then came the seventh and last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007, breaking the last
one’s record to become the fastest selling book ever published in the world. The book sold a staggering eleven
million copies both in the UK and the US in 24hrs of release, making JK Rowling the world’s first billionaire writer.
JK Rowling couldn’t have reached this monumental success if she didn’t believe in herself. She moved on with her
work, disregarding whatever anyone thought about her book not good enough to succeed. She was even compelled
by her editor to use her initials as the author of the book, instead of her full name because the editor feared young
male readers who are her primary audience would not be inclined to read a book by a female writer.
JK Rowling’s success story simply shows that there is nothing you cannot achieve if only you believe in yourself. You
may be working on something that hasn’t been done before and people tell you it’s not possible. But it can be
possible if you believe it can!

7. "When you dream, you can do what you like."-Joanne Rowling interview to Newsweek
After years of unfulfilling jobs and trying to meet ends as a single mother, J. K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter,
can live the life of her childhood dreams and engage herself in the occupation she loves most - writing. Joanne
Rowling lives in Scotland and regularly travels around the world. The success of her Harry Potter and tremendous
public interest to her own life, was a shock to Joanne. However, to her, Harry Potter still remains a part of her private
world.
"I can remember being a kid and being very powerless and having this whole underworld that to adults is always
going to be impenetrable. I think that I have very vivid memories of how it felt to be Harry's age."
(J. K. Rowling , interview to Time magazine)
At the end of 1999, two years after the publication of her Harry Potter, Joanne Rowling was officially a millionaires.
Financially it was a remarkable five-years journey which started from cashing social benefits checks and ended with
receiving royalties.
In 2008 Sunday Times Rich List ranked her as the twelfth richest woman in Britain. Forbes ranked Rowling as the
forty-eight most powerful celebrity of 2007.
The tremendous financial success does not cover the whole story of the writer Joanne Rowling. Her journey to the
publication of Harry Potter lasted much longer than 5 years. This journey was about learning to make mistakes and
take risks. Joanne admitted that she had been afraid of failure when she graduated from university. This was the
reason that she never tried to publish the stories she had written before Harry Potter.
"I was afraid to risk poverty and disillusionment and devote myself wholeheartedly to the only ambition I had ever
had, to be a writer."- Joanne Rowling
In the most difficult period of her life, J. K. Rowling realized that she had in fact nothing to lose at all. When she
became a single parent without a job a with no money, she decided to take an action to find out her value as a writer.
The rest of her story is well known.
Tatiana Sidorova is the owner of the website http://www.famous-women-and-beauty.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tatiana_Sidorova

8. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2620843
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers,
members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an
extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of
giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation!
Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself
that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast
my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the
distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has
helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a
single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear
that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the
law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out
ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have
asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important
lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together
to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of
failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want
to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable
experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking

9. an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me
expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However,
my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom
had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing
personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the
irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.
So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English
Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up
to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end
of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have
found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think
they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it
came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their
point of view. 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. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never
experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I
quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and
stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and
hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on
which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far
too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack
for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life
and that of my peers.

10. I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated,
you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet
inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose
that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very
well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a
desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the
average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is
quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any
conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an
epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone
parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.
The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come
to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life
was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since
represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel
extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping
away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than
what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered
to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the
determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free,
because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a
daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom
became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
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.

11. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.
Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I
discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also
found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you
are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or
the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such
knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than
any qualification I ever earned.
So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in
knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications,
your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who
confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control,
and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination,
because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I
personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to
value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human
capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and
innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power
that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it
informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the
form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my
lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research
department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian
regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside
world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared
without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the
testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten,
eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

12. Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from
their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their
governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information,
or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the
time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He
trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted
upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given
the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man
whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and
wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly
hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never
heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run
and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him
the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his
mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate
I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal
representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow
humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares,
about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had
ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for
their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading
to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal
well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they
do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the
most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

13. Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without
having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One
might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or
sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain
comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how
it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or
to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not
touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they
have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form
of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully
unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without
ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own
apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I
ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this,
written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer
reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives.
It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we
touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s
lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and
received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets
you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower.
The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear

14. on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege,
and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who
have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the
powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not
have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your
existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change.
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.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had
at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They
are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of
trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for
Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared
experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that
we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us
ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that
even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another
of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career
ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives. Thank you very much.
http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/06/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination
If you are a geek doubting Enneagram Six—or for that matter Five, Nine, One, etc, you have in your
video collection your deluxe DVD or Blue-Ray combo pack of Harry Potter’s Six installment of
the Half-Blood Prince and all the rest of the series. You are giddy as a 13-year-old Twilighter or
cougar mom, as you pop that baby into your DVD player—not to watch the movie at first, but to go to
the behind the scene footage of how it was all done.
Instead, you are intrigued by a documentary piece of J.K. Rowling speaking about the beginning of
her life, and her fears. (June 2007, the completion of Book Seven). Why and how Harry Potter was

15. formed and the lessons she‟s learn due to a troubled childhood; her fear of her father and loss of her
mother—along with failure, passion for writing and the brink of homelessness. Ah, the Phobic
Enneagram Six has been shaped.
The Fear of Failure and Knowing Oneself
One of the things that struck me about Rowling was her true type shinning through, as her fear of
public speaking, (See video below). Her Six-like voice of stutters and half beliefs in why and how she
became so famous. Doubters have a very hard time understanding that they can be special, have
true talents or can be successful in life. Even to the point of fear ridden body aches and pains of not
believing they are entitled to everything they have. In fact, most Doubters don‟t even believe they are
successful—though the million of fans screaming your name might give a clue to that
success Rowling.
You will see Rowling go back to childhood memories [on the DVD], trying to make peace with herself
and her past life—where she came from and how she got to be who she is now. Something that all
types but especially the Six should review. Most Doubters need to reflect on the positives and all
they have accomplished—due to much self doubt, if they are to remain healthy—as Rowling
admitted to her deep dark depression at the start of her career. Understanding the Enneagram,
depression in the Fear Triads (Five, Six, Seven) is very common and as long as you recognize the
signs, you can learn to cope with what you need to move forward in your transformational work.
What Does Success Mean to a Six?
Most likely, not the America dream of most people living in the States. The Three type, the Self-
starter has that role well laid—as success is everything to them. But Sixes has a different point-of-
view. They could care less about money, power and fame—though, they do dream of living secure
lives and having a happy family. Rowling talked about this at length on the DVD, regarding what she
feared, and why she was looking for security—even in the land that is Harry Potter. Her husband
said it best, “She worries about everything, and only trusts one person.” Trusting mainly in herself—
that all will go well. Worse case Scenarios are always in the back of the Sixes mind and hard to
remove from thought.
The Lessons of life of Harry Potter
She stated he had to have a happy ending, because “the lesson of right and wrong, good verse evil
had to be taught and earned”—one of the virtues of a Six is Courage struck home. You can see this
also throughout Ron’s growth to manhood and Harry‟s 5w6 wing when fear plays a part including
faith. (Not in religion, but in a belief that fairness has to win out).
You will never know yourself or the strength of your relationships, until both have been
tested by diversity. – J.K. Rowling
The Role of Failure on the Road to Success
In talking to a pass friend in London about the role of failure—they'd believed that success can only
come when you fail at something. Quote being, 'The Paradox of Success is You Need Failure to
Achieve It.‟ Rowling also has a similar perspective—failure pushing you into the mindset of success.
Understanding this thought, giving of ones self or seeing your life thought another‟s person‟s eyes
and on the true meaning of success. Understanding that to really achieve success, life has to give
you a curve ball and you might feel pain, lose, and sometimes madness in the process of living out
your dream or what you see yourself as being—so you can realize what you have in the end, was
earned by sweat and tears—then you will have complete appreciation of success.

16. If you are an Enneagram Six, I encourage you to view this Video—most likely you will see yourself
in Rowling. Laugh, cry and rejoice, knowing that someone as famous, brilliant, and yes, unsure even
today, that you have something in common—the role to achieve success is through failure.
As we get in gear on the last two installments of Book Seven: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,
let‟s rejoin the fact that this phobic fearful Six rose up out of the ashes like Dumbledore’s Phoenix
and became something more for herself, and for all of us, and we are the richer for it.
Up next typing Twins, George and Fred
Continue reading on Examiner.com J.K. Rowling: On Harry Potter, failure, fear, success and the
Enneagram Six - National Enneagram | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/enneagram-in-
national/j-k-rowling-on-harry-potter-failure-fear-success-and-the-enneagram-six#ixzz1YJxtkF8E
http://www.examiner.com/enneagram-in-national/j-k-rowling-on-harry-potter-failure-fear-success-and-
the-enneagram-six
The Start of a Reading Revolution: Harry Potter Comes To Life
It was 1990. J.K. Rowling was working as a bilingual secretary for Amnesty International in London. She
used her off time at work to write her own stories. Though she was not a published author as of yet, she
longed to be.
When Rowling turned 26 years old, she decided she had had enough of her life as a secretary. She left
Amnesty International and moved to Portugal to teach English. Again, this was a far cry from her dream
job, but the free time it gave her allowed Rowling to begin writing a new story, one that she believed was
her best story yet.
It was a story about a young boy who is sent off to wizard school. With each passing day she spent in
Portugal, Rowling took more and more notes on her story, adding bits and pieces to her lead character,
Harry Potter.
After marrying, having a daughter, and getting divorced all in Portugal, Rowling decided it was time to
move back home. She returned to Edinburgh as a single mother and struggled to find work. Finally, she
found a job as a French teacher, but still Rowling could only focus on only one thing: she wanted to finish
her latest story before her teaching job began.
With her newborn in tow, Rowling spent most of her daughter’s nap times working relentlessly in coffee
houses trying to piece together her book. “I knew how difficult it would be just to get a book published,”
she recalls. “I was a completely unknown writer.”
Rowling had met her goal; she had finished her manuscript before beginning her new teaching job and
sent it off to two different publishers. But her initial fears proved themselves warranted. Rowling’s
manuscript was rejected by both publishing houses. She remained determined to see her story in print, so
continued to send her manuscript off to different publishers.
In the end, a total of twelve publishers had rejected Rowling’s story. But number thirteen proved to be the
lucky one. Within a few months, Rowling’s Harry Potter character had come to life between the pages of a

17. book in England. A few months after that, the American rights to the novel were bought for a hefty sum.
With that, Rowling finally quit her teaching job and decided to focus full-time on writing.
Today, the stories Rowling first wrote in coffee shops have become famous the world over as not only
books, but also movies, computer games, music, and more. She is the world’s first billion-dollar author,
the highest earning novelist in history, and one of only five self-made female billionaires. As of 2007,
Rowling’s first six books in the seven book series have sold over 325 million copies. The final book, Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hollows, was the fastest-selling book of all time.
It might have been a rocky road, but Rowling’s dream of supporting herself and her child by writing stories
did indeed become a reality.
http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/1713/The-Start-of-a-Reading-Revolution-
Harry-Potter-Comes-To-Life.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_influences_and_analogues
Harry Potter
„Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire‟, written by J.K. Rowling, is an excellent example of a modern novel
that uses medieval influences extensively. Many of the novel‟s characters are based on medieval ideas
and superstitions. The settings in the book resemble old medieval towns as well as castles. The book is
also full of medieval imagery such as knights in armour, carriages etc. Whilst there is no time travel
involved in the novel, the medieval period is used to such an effect that the reader is encouraged to
ignore the fact that the book is set in the present.
People in the medieval era were quite superstitious. They believed in fictional characters such as witches
and wizards. „Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire‟ is a novel based on the existence of witches and
wizards in secret communities. The medieval period is well known for the hierarchy of society. The society
consisted of landlords and their servants. This medieval element was brought into the story in the form of
house elves.
House elves are little creatures that work for the wizarding communities that have no rights and are
unable to use any magic:
“The tiny creature looked up and parted its fingers, revealing enormous brown eyes and a nose the exact
size and shape of a large tomato…it was…unmistakably a house-elf, as Harry‟s friend Dobby had been.
Harry had set Dobby free from his old owners, the Malfoy family.” (p88)
The novel also incorporates fictional animals that medieval people believed to be real.
These include creatures such as dragons, trolls and three-headed dogs:
“Dragons. Four fully grown, enormous, vicious-looking dragons were rearing on their hind legs inside an
enclosure fenced with thick planks of wood, roaring and snorting- torrents of fire were shooting into the
dark sky from their open, fanged mouths, fifty feet above the ground on their outstretched necks.” (p286)

18. People living in the medieval era created stories about creatures such as these and heroes that defeated
them. In this way „Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire‟ uses medieval influences.
The settings used in „Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire‟ are typical of those found in literature of the
medieval period. The opening scene is set in a very typical present day suburban street. The following
scene is set at the „Hogwarts Castle‟. A castle is a very typical medieval image used in a lot of medieval
literature. Another common medieval image is that of hoards of people around a stadium watching a sport
or a fight.
This image is brought into the novel with the „Quidditch World Cup‟:
“…the roar of sound that was now filling the packed stadium; his voice echoed over them, booming into
every corner of the stands: „Ladies and gentlemen… welcome! Welcome to the final of the four hundred
and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup!” (p93)
An important setting in „Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire‟ is the last remaining pure wizading town
named Hogsmeade. The students take trips there several times a year. A particularly famous landmark in
this town is a typically medieval pub name The Three Broomsticks:
“The pub was as crowded as ever…he went up to the bar with Ron and Hermione and ordered three
butterbeers…” (p386)
The settings are very typical of the medieval time and the contrast with the present day suburban street at
the beginning gives them a greater effect.
There a many objects used and described in the novel that reinforce the medieval influence. These are
mostly things used around the castle eg. Parchment and quills are used in classes instead of pens and
paper, the students travel to the castle in carriages and they use trunks instead of suitcases. Another
medieval influence used in the novel is the use of robes as Hogwarts formal dress. Robes are often
associated with monks in a monastery which is a typical medieval image. The gradually built up
description of the castle and the ornaments that line the corridors gives a very medieval feel. There are
images of armory, massive portraits and secret passageways.
„Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire‟ uses the medieval period to set the novel, while still in present time,
completely away from civilisation. It does this by using typically medieval images in the characters, the
settings and various objects described in the novel. The medieval period is used very effectively and
provides a great contrast for the substance of the plot when compared with the very beginning and the
very end.
http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=36738
http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/