Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)

by J.K. Rowling

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours’ time by Mrs. Dursley’s scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley. . . . He couldn’t know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: “To Harry Potter — the boy who lived!”

Dudley snored but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering. . . .

“Fred, you next,” the plump woman said. “I’m not Fred, I’m George,” said the boy. “Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother? Can’t you tell I’m George?” “Sorry, George, dear.” “Only joking, I am Fred,” said the boy, and off he went.

“All right, keep your hair on.”

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.

“What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows.

As a middle school teacher … I think about this quote every day