Jo in early interview

• "I think it's funny and... I think it's frightening. [...] Judging by letters I've received I'd say I've succeeded in that and that's all I wanted."

• "It sold very well, which wildly overshot my expectations, I have to say, because it sold about 30,000 copies in the U.K. which is phenomenal. To me it's phenomenal. To me more than anyone else, probably! It won the Smarties book prize recently which was fantastic, mainly because [...] you're shortlisted by adults, but children vote the gold, silver and bronze medals. So children have a say in that."

• "My realistic side has not allowed me to dream half of what's happened to me."

• "If it were done right, I think it could make a great film. And if it was done right, yes that would be wild, that would be wonderful to see it as a film. But I wanted to write books, do you know what I mean? So my absolute ambition was not Hollywood."

• "I'm a quarter Scottish by blood, on my mother's side. My parents met and married in Scotland and then settled in the Forest of Dean in England and for some odd reason my sister and I have both gravitated back to Scotland. I have to say too, I've always imagined... Harry starts off in London, or near London in Surrey, but he ends up in Scotland, the haunted school for wizards I always imagined to be next to a loch, this big gothic thing set in all the mountains of Scotland. That's never made clear in the books, that's just left open, but in my imagination it's in Scotland."

Jo in early interview