J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo


On the benefits of failure and the importance of imagination:

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.

...

I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

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.

J.K. Rowling

(Original text found at http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/)

At twenty-one, Rowling was not afraid of poverty. She was afraid of failure. What will I be afraid of when I'm twenty-one? Because right now,  I am already afraid of so many things. I am afraid of jellyfish and trains and insects. I am afraid of forgetting Chris. I am afraid of losing, both in the transitive and intransitive verb. But listening to Rowling, I realize it is my choice to be afraid. I can choose to let go of my fears and just be. 

Robert Frost

"No tears in the writing, no tears in the reading. No surprise in the writing, no surprise in the reading."

Robert Frost

Simply true--even from the man who wrote "Directive," who deliberately confuses his readers inside and beyond his poems. 

Elizabeth Gilbert

I have not read Eat, Pray, Love. I only know of its phenomenal success. Emily did a scene of it for Shakespearean Idol our junior year, and I thought it was absolutely poignant and witty. I do agree with Gilbert--being, and really, succeeding as a writer is not easy. But I think the challenge is worth it. Worth every word you put down, even the scribbled and crossed out ones that end up next to the apple core.

Norman Mailer

"Every one of my books has killed me a little more."

Norman Mailer

How do you live a creative life when it can kill you? 

I think of Franz Kafka, the insomniac who wrote during his sleepless nights. Kafka's creativity actually revived him, I believe, because what other anchor could he have held onto?