I know [Umbridge] by reputation and I'm sure she's no Death Eater-" "She's foul enough to be one..." "Yes, but the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters.

I am what you might call abstractly anti-capitalist. For instance, I am suspicious of the old leftists who focus all their hatred on the United States. What about Chinese neo-colonialism? Why are the left silent about that? When I say this, it annoys them, of course. Good!

When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless

Complexity excites the mind, and order rewards it. In the garden, one finds both, including vanishingly small orders too complex to spot, and orders so vast the mind struggles to embrace them.

Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.

It now lately sometimes seemed a black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe.