I was lucky enough to be in the audience when J.K. Rowling gave this speech, thanks to a graduating cousin of mine. Reading these words today, having more recently been through my own graduation and just generally having more self-awareness 7 years later, only increases their resonance and impact on me. I think I'll keep this book on my night stand for a good long while and look back at it whenever I need to.

A decent speech. I couldn’t help but compare it to Neil Gaiman’s “Make Good Art” speech… which I liked better. But, I did love all the Classics references and her story about working for Amnesty International was enlightening. Ending with a Plutarch quote is always great though.

Un buen discurso de J.K. Es una crack y me gusta que haya realizado está apología al fracaso.

A great inspirational book; this is the speech she gave to the graduating class at Harvard in 2008.

Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination is essentially a transcript of the commencement address J.K. Rowling delivered at Harvard University in 2008. Packaged with some charming illustrations, the book is being published primarily to support Lumos, a charity founded by J.K. Rowling to benefit disadvantaged children. I am very glad I discovered the book at my library and look forward to sharing it with others.

Read my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2015/08/very-good-lives-fringe-benefits-of.html

It’s an excellent commencement speech. I like the correlation between empathy and imagination

A short but powerful read. Taken from JK Rowling's commencement address at Harvard, this sermon makes the case for failure and imagination. Failure strips away the inessential leaving only the essential. In the presence of failure, is the opportunity to choose the path forward.

Imagination, on the other hand, helps us to see within the lives of others.

"We do not need magic to transform our world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."

Yet another reason why I admire Jo Rowling so much.

“I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, 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.”
― J.K. Rowling

“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
― J.K. Rowling

“You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. 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.”
― J.K. Rowling

Absolutely beautiful. So very glad that I found this gem at Target, and I can now add it to my collection of her works.

I just can't believe I haven't read this before. Some of my favorite quotes of hers are from this speech so it's pretty crazy that I haven't read this.

loved it of course.