J. K. Rowling

Harvard University, June 5, 2008, "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination" J.K. Rowling's speech has two halves, and the second is the one people forget. The first describes her years of failure before Harry Potter and ends with "rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." The second goes back to her early twenties at Amnesty International's London headquarters, reading letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes, and argues that imagination is above all the power to empathize with people whose lives you have never shared. That pairing of resilience and empathy makes it richer than a pep talk about bouncing back.