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J. K. Rowling

86 quotes

“It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags — because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter — scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There's joy, relief and safety in conformity.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode 'woman' as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“None of the gender critical women I've talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they're hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who're facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don't endorse.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word "TERF" may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement's seen in decades.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The last thing I want to say is this. I haven't written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I'm extraordinarily fortunate; I'm a survivor, certainly not a victim.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I'm creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All I'm asking — all I want — is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have to assume [they] thought doxxing me would intimidate me out of speaking up for women's sex-based rights. They should have reflected on the fact that I've now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven't stopped speaking out. Perhaps, and I'm just throwing this out there, the best way to prove your movement isn't a threat to women, is to stop stalking, harassing and threatening us.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a series of posts on Twitter (22 November 2021), as cited in "JK Rowling’s address posted on Twitter by trans activists", The Times (23 November 2021)
“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tweet (12 December 2021), as cited in "JK Rowling condemns police guidance which lets rapists self-identify as women", The Telegraph (13 December 2021)
“The law Nicola Sturgeon is trying to pass in Scotland will harm the most vulnerable women in society — those seeking help after male violence/rape and incarcerated women. Statistics show that imprisoned women are already far more likely to have been previously abused.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most searing, heartfelt and courageous response yet to Shona Robison's astounding claim in the Scottish parliament that there is no evidence sexual predators "have ever had to pretend to be anything else". Susan, as a fellow survivor, I salute you.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tweet, as cited in "Self-ID law will harm the most vulnerable women, says JK Rowling", The Times (7 March 2022)
“Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics. #IStandWithUkraine”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tweet (25 March 2022), as cited in "J.K. Rowling hits back at Putin after he likened Russia to her in rant against cancel culture", CNN (25 March 2022)
“A strange new form of temporary blindness has broken out among Scottish politicians. None of them could read placards calling for violence against women while standing inches away from them, yet they were instantly cured when photos of them posing with the signs hit the press.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Post on X (22 January 2024), as cited in Jenness Mitchell "Scottish politicians and JK Rowling voice anger over 'decapitate terfs' sign at pro-trans rally in Glasgow", Sky News (23 January 2023)
“Never forget, Sturgeon, her government and supporters have insisted that it is ludicrous to imagine anyone would dress in women's clothes to get access to vulnerable women and girls. Wouldn't happen. Everyone is who they say they are. To question this is hate.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a series of tweets quoted in "Nicola Sturgeon: Gender law opponents use women’s rights as 'cloak' to be transphobic" The Telegraph (27 January 2023)
“[To Labour frontbencher Lisa Nandy] You said rapists should be transferred to women's prisons if they self-identify as women.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Given that you're one of the biggest reasons many women on the Left no longer trust Labour to defend their rights, do you stand by these comments?”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comments on X (formerly known as Twitter), as cited in "JK Rowling says Lisa Nandy is reason women on left don't trust Labour", The Independent (12 October 2023).
“I've looked around and realised that it has to be someone who can take the hit. And it has to be me. I can afford it.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This has never been about trans rights. [...] This is about women’s rights and activists' demands to dismantle those rights. I have nothing but profound sympathy for trans women who have experienced male violence. I want trans people to be safe. I just don't want women and girls to be any less safe.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Appearing unannounced at a FiLiA conference in Glasgow (15 October 2023), as cited in "JK Rowling speaks at FiLiA feminist conference labelled 'transphobic'", The National (Glasgow, 16 October 2023)
“There is a huge appeal, and I try to show this in the Potter books, to black and white thinking. It's the easiest place to be and in many ways it's the safest place to be. If you take an all-or-nothing position on anything, you will definitely find comrades, you will easily find a community. "I’ve sworn allegiance to this one simple idea." What I've tried to show in the Potter books, and what I feel strongly myself, is that we should mistrust ourselves most when we are certain.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[In the United States, during the early 2000s, Rowling's books were burned by Evangelical Christians because they were perceived as promoting witchcraft.] Book burners, by definition, have placed themselves across a line of rational debate. There is no book on this planet that I would burn, including books that I do think are damaging. Burning, to me, is the last resort of people who cannot argue.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cited by Anita Singh in "JK Rowling: Black and white thinking on controversial issues should be abandoned" The Telegraph (21 February 2023)
“There is something about a mass of human beings. There's always an edge in a crowd. Always.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Something] I explore in the Potter books [is that] a sense of righteousness is not incompatible with doing terrible things. You know, most of the people in movements that we consider hugely abhorrent, many many many of the people involved in those movements understood themselves to be on the side of righteousness. Believed they were doing the right thing. Felt themselves justified in what they were doing.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never sat out to upset anyone. However, I was not uncomfortable with getting off my pedestal, and what has interested me over the last ten years, and certainly in the last few years, the last 2-3 years, particularly on social media: "You've ruined your legacy. Oh, you could have been beloved forever but you chose to say this." And I think you could not have misunderstood me more profoundly.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Source: Kulturnyheterna (at 8m0s) quoting the trailer of the podcast, SVT, 22 February 2023.
“I'm sick of this s--- [shit]. This is not a woman. These are #NotOurCrimes.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Crime statistics are rendered useless if violent and sexual attacks committed by men are recorded as female crimes. Activists are already clamouring for this sadistic killer to be incarcerated in a women’s prison. Ideologically driven misinformation is not journalism.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, as cited in "JK Rowling says 'I'm sick of this s---' after transgender cat killer is called a woman", The Telegraph (27 February 2024).
“Kemi Badenoch and I might not agree on a lot, but how often are male politicians called "spiteful"? And what's the issue with her manner? Did she fail in womanly sweetness, kindness and deference?”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[To Alastair Campbell, former spokesman for Tony Blair, who had commented Badenoch was not speaking about her role as Secretary of State for Business and Trade] Badenoch is also minister for women and equalities. Thanks once again for highlighting Labour's complacency and indifference towards the rights of half the electorate.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Posts on X (3 June 2024), as cited in "JK Rowling attacks Labour’s ‘indifference to women’ in trans row", The Times (3 June 2024)
“[Referring to Emma Watson] Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. 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.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places. Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise. 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. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully 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.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime would think of Nazi Germany. … I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the Wizarding world. So you have to the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is a great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves on nothing else, they can pride themselves on perceived purity. … The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in John Granger ‪Harry Potter's Bookshelf : The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures‬ (2009)
“[The project eventually became Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997). Rowling's first husband] knew what that manuscript meant to me because at a point he took the manuscript and hid it. That was his hostage. When I realised I was definitely going to go, I would take a few pages of the manuscript into work every day, just a few pages so he wouldn't realise anything was missing, and I would photocopy it. Gradually in a cupboard in the staff room, bit by bit, a photocopied manuscript grew and grew because I suspected that if I wasn’t able to get out with everything he would burn it or take it and hold it hostage. That manuscript meant so much to me and it was the thing that I prioritised saving. The only thing I prioritised beyond that was my daughter but at that point she was still inside me so she was as safe as she can be in that situation.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: JK Rowling reveals abusive ex-husband hid Harry Potter manuscripts" The Times (21 February 2023)
“When I've asked what the lack of female-only spaces would mean for women of certain faith groups, or survivors of sexual violence, the response is an almighty shrug. Over and again I've heard "no trans person has ever harmed a woman or a girl in a female space", the speakers' consciences apparently untroubled by the fact that they are parroting an easily disprovable lie, because there's ample evidence that men claiming a female identity have committed sexual offences, acts of violence and voyeurism, both inside women's spaces and without. Indeed, the Ministry of Justice's own figures show that there are proportionately more trans-identified males in jail in the UK for sexual offences than among male prisoners as a whole. When this inconvenient fact is raised, I'm sometimes told trans-identified sex offenders "aren't really trans, they're just gaming the system”. Well, yes. That's the point. If a system relies on an unfalsifiable sense of self rather than sex, it's impossible to keep bad faith actors out.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Extract from essay published in Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn (eds.) The Women Who Wouldn’t Say Wheesht: Voices from the Front-Line of Scotland’s Battle for Women's Rights (Constable), as republished in "JK Ro…
“[Rosie Duffield] and I share more than the occasional meal and a fairly sweary WhatsApp thread. Last month, a man received a suspended prison sentence for sending both of us death threats. Rosie was to be taken out with a gun; I was to be beaten to death with a hammer. The level of threats Rosie has received is such that she's had to hire personal security and was recently advised not to conduct in-person hustings. Is this what [[Keir Starmer|[Keir] Starmer]] meant, when he talked about toxic, divided debate? A female MP in his own party being intimidated and harassed? Or was he referencing the activists in black masks who turn up at women’s demonstrations with the declared intention of punching "Terfs", an intention that has more than once translated into action? Was he perhaps thinking of the trans activists who sang "f*** you" over a microphone as women from all over the world queued outside FiLia, the feminist conference, to discuss issues like female genital mutilation? It didn’t seem so. The impression given by Starmer at Thursday’s debate was that there had been something unkind, something toxic, something hard line in Rosie’s words, even though almost identical words had sounded perfectly reasonable when spoken by Blair.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: JK Rowling: Labour has dismissed women like me. I'll struggle to vote for it", The Times (21 June 2024).
“Emma’s 'all witches' speech was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence: 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through.' She has my phone number. [...] This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family’s safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one-line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.”
J. K. Rowling (born 1965) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tweet (29 September 2025), reprinted in "JK Rowling: Emma Watson is ignorant of her own ignorance", The Times (29 September 2025).