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Book: Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
Quotes of Book: Very Good Lives: The Fringe
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  1. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    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.
    book-quoteinspirationalimagination

  2. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    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.
    book-quotestrengthpositivity

  3. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy.
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  4. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    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.
    book-quotetruthstrength

  5. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiration 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.
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  6. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    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.
    book-quotelifestrength

  7. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
    book-quoteinspirationalimaginationmonsters

  8. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.
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  9. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
    book-quote

  10. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was.
    book-quotetruth

  11. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    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.
    book-quoteinspirationalhumanitymisattributed-plutarch

  12. J.K. Rowling _ Very Good Lives: The Fringe

    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.
    book-quoteimaginationprivilege
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