[Inspirations] J.K. Rowling's Speech at Harvard 2008 Commencement

http://www.elise.com/weblog/archives/007264jk_rowling_gives_commencement_speech_at_harvard.php

http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/06/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination
Full text speech reference

Quotations:

"What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality."
-reflections, empathy, maturity into action = change.

"We do not need magic to transform our world, we carry all the power inside ourselves already, we have the power to imagine better."
-imagine the views, taking the steps to commit, action.

"Not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

:) 

The benefits of failure ... "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 already 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." 

- realizing what is important, realizing what is still there, realizing your own strength and qualities that still sustains you to be all right... = things aren't that bad. 

J. K. Rowling has a beautiful soul too.