Further
quotes from J.K.Rowling's L.A. press conference have emerged, in which she discusses religion in relation to Harry Potter. Rowling said that "Hogwarts is a multifaith school" and explains why she refrained from talking about the subject until after the release of
Deathly Hallows.
Quote:
"To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvious," she said. "But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going."
Quote:
"They're very British books, so on a very practical note Harry was going to find biblical quotations on tombstones," Rowling explained. "[But] I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones at Godric's Hollow, they sum up — they almost epitomize the whole series."
Jo also talked about the two poems featured at the beginning of
Deathly Hallows.
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"I really enjoyed choosing those two quotations because one is pagan, of course, and one is from a Christian tradition," Rowling said of their inclusion. "I'd known it was going to be those two passages since 'Chamber' was published. I always knew [that] if I could use them at the beginning of book seven then I'd cued up the ending perfectly. If they were relevant, then I went where I needed to go.
"They just say it all to me, they really do," she added.
J.K.R. also touched on her own faith.
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"The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It's something I struggle with a lot," she revealed. "On any given moment if you asked me [if] I believe in life after death, I think if you polled me regularly through the week, I think I would come down on the side of yes — that I do believe in life after death. [But] it's something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books."
"I go to church myself," she declared. "I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion."
Source:
The Leaky Cauldron