Articles

J.K. Rowling’s Commencement Address at Harvard

By Joy ⋅ June 9, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

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 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.

Watch or read the entire address here.