J.K. Rowling: 10 quotes on her birthday

Joanne "Jo" Rowling created a phenomenon when she published her first book, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in 1997. Rowling's books on the boy wizard have since become the number one bestselling series of all time, inspiring millions of readers around the world, children and adult alike. Known to most of the world as J.K. Rowling, she has now begun writing under the name Robert Galbraith to create a mystery series about a private investigator named Cormoran Strike. Born on July 31, 1965, Rowling was named the "Most Influential Woman in Great Britain" in 2010, and supports a number of charities. Here, on her birthday, are 10 quotes from one of the most successful children's authors of all time.

Dan Hallman/Invision/AP
This Oct. 16, 2012 photo shows author J.K. Rowling at an appearance to promote her latest book "The Casual Vacancy," at The David H. Koch Theater in New York.

1. Common humanity

"We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”

– from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (2007)

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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