User blog comment:JoePlay/Wizarding World Giveaway/@comment-4141296-20110713014440

Growing up my dad read the first harry potter book to me and my sister. He would read a chapter a night, and it was great. Sometimes we would even act out the scenes. It's crazy to think that i was reading only a chapter a night, when eventually i was buying the books at midnight dressed like a wizard and proceeding to finish the books in a couple days, getting very little sleep.

The books taught me about love, life and death. Death especially... My dad died a few months ago in a freak car accident. I was re-reading the 6th book at the time, and i had gotten to the part right before Dumbledore dies. In a weird way it was comforting, to know that harry was going through something very similar, like we were going through it together.

I searched the books for quotes to read at my dad's funeral. I wasn't able to read them, but this is what i found:

“You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself plainly when you have need of him.”

"Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second."

"Does it hurt?"' The childish question had escaped Harry's lips before he could stop it. “Dying? Not at all,” said Sirius. “Quicker and easier than falling asleep."

"As is a story, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives."

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

The consequences of our actions are so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.

"You think the dead we loved truly ever leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly in times of great trouble?"

Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.

"Love wins, It does win; we know it wins. When the person dies, love isn't turned off like a faucet. It is an amazingly resilient part of us.” -JK Rowling

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default. -JK Rowling

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love."

"Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure."

"Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery."

"We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided."

"We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already." _____________________________________ JK Rowling is Brilliant. And i am so thankful to have this story.