Excerpts from the Text of J.K. Rowling’s speech

Excerpts from the Text of J.K. Rowling’s speech - 'The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination' on June 5, 2008

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 criticize 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 romanticized only by fools.

DNN: Agree - that one cannot blame one’s parent for their point of view.

DNN: Agree – that there is an expiry date on blaming one’s parents for steering one in the wrong direction

DNN: Agree – that one cannot criticize ones parents for hoping that one would never experience poverty.

DNN: Agree – that poverty causes stress, fear, depression, humiliation and hardship

DNN: Agree - (and this is of primary importance which leads me to further paradoxical excerpt of Madam Rowling), that ”climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.”

Now a further excerpt really confuses the audience:

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.

DNN: If happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check list of acquisition, (accolades) or achievement than how does one ‘’climb out of poverty by one‘s own effort‘’ { which according to her causes all the stress, fear, depression, humiliation and hardship }?

DNN: Agree – that Life is difficult, complicated and beyond anyone’s total control – but if one’s qualifications and one’s CV are not one’s life then what is? – And how do you define yourself? What are you? What are you made of if not of your thoughts, ideas, acquisition, accolades, achievement, qualifications, CV, money, fame and power?  

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