When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them.

Being fed, and having a soft bed, and other people being in charge, seemed the most wonderful prospect in the world at that moment.

Although people rarely died playing Quidditch, referees had been known to vanish and turn up months later in the Sahara Desert.

As for the fact that Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle apeared to be going their different ways when they were usually inseparable, these things happened as people got older--Ron and Hermione, Harry reflected sadly, were living proof.

Young people are so infernally convinced that they are absolutely right about everything.

We touch other people's lives simply by existing.

No, I'm fine,' said Harry, wondering why he kept telling people this, and wondering whether he had ever been less fine.

It seemed impossible that there could be people in the world who still desired food, who laughed, who neither knew nor cared that Sirius Black was gone forever.