Quotation from J. K. Rowling - From Her Harvard Commencement Speech, Published as a Book Titled VERY GOOD LIVES

Ryan Petty

There’s been a spate of commencement addresses, repackaged and sold as hardcover gift books. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

The best of them are inspiring, as they should be. Certainly, this includes VERY GOOD LIVES: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination by J. K. Rowling (Little, Brown and Company, 2015).

Here's my favorite quote from her speech:

“Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.”

J. K. Rowling has, of course, demonstrated her capacity to help readers do this. 

It's a power writers have, when we do it right.