J.K. Rowling wrote:

It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
(Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, 1999)

Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy.
(Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

...people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.
(Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince)

You sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.
(Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
(Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 1997)

and she said:

It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.

Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born in Bristol, England. She always wanted to write starting when she was five or six, with a story about a rabbit called Rabbit. She and her sister played with a group of children in the neighbourhood. Two of the children had the surname Potter, a name she remembers liking very much. When Rowling was nine, the family moved to Tutshill near Chepstow in the Forest of Dean where her small, traditional teacher was strict and frightening to the quiet, imaginative young girl. At high school her favourite subject was English. She did not excel in sports. She told stories to her studious friends over lunchtime, in which they performed the heroic roles. She was Head Girl in her final year.

At Exeter University Rowling took a degree in French, spent one year studying in Paris, then moved to London to work for Amnesty International as a researcher and bilingual secretary. There she would type stories when no one was watching. It was in 1990 that the now famous train ride occurred, the ride when she, the idea came to her of a boy who is a wizard and doesn't know it. Four hours later, as the train pulled into King's Cross Station four hours later, much of the story line and many of the characters were formed. She kept working on it in pubs and cafes over her lunch hours. Although Rowling had been writing short stories and working on two unpublished novels for adults, the idea of Harry Potter took over her writing time.

Over the following years, working and raising her daughter alone, she kept working on Harry Potter. It is very hard to keep working on something for years for no pay and with no knowledge it will ever be published. Rowling already had written unpublished novels, so it was years and years of unrewarding writing which finally struck gold. Despite the book being rejected, she just kept sending it out until she found an agent who would accept it.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in June 1997, seven years after she started it. The rest is well known publishing history.

Perhaps the reason Happy Potter is so popular with children and adults is what Rowling said in an interview published in Book Links magazine: "The book is really about the power of the imagination. What Harry is learning to do is to develop his full potential. Wizardry is just the analogy I use."

Despite huge success and no need to ever earn money again, Rowling continues to work on writing the seven-book saga of Harry Potter. Is that sort of perseverance what success is really al about?