What Jo says about...
Death

Please note: unless you see quotemarks, these are summaries, and not JKR's words themselves. Please see the linked article for the actual text.

• JKR: "the books do explore the misuse of power, and there's an attempt to make some sense of death" [Read the exact quote from The Herald, 1998]
• Are you planning to kill off Ron? JKR: I can't let on too much. [Read the exact quote from School Library Journal, 1999]
• One of the rules she has for her books is that "Magic cannot bring dead people back to life…. Once you’re dead, you’re dead." [Read the exact quote from WBUR interview, 1999]
• Dealing with death and facing up to death are "strong central themes" in the books. [Read the exact quote from CBC Hot Type, 2000]
• No magic power can resurrect a truly dead person. [Read the exact quote from The Guardian, 2000]
• Death is not reversible, even in the Wizarding World, though in Book 7 "you'll see just how close you can get to the dead."[Read the exact quote from The Herald, 2000]
• JKR on Voldemort and Cedric's death: "We really are talking about someone who is incredibly power hungry. Racist, really. And what do those kinds of people do? They treat human life so lightly. I wanted to be accurate in that sense. My editor was shocked by the way the character was killed, which was very dismissive. That was entirely deliberate." [Read the exact quote from Time Magazine, 2000]
• JKR: "Mostly they [kids] are really worried about Ron. As if I'm going to kill Harry's best friend. What I find interesting is only once has anyone said to me, "Don't kill Hermione," and that was after a reading when I said no one's ever worried about her... They see her as someone who is not vulnerable, but I see her as someone who does have quite a lot of vulnerability in her personality." [Read the exact quote from Time Magazine, 2000]
• Very early on, Jo had "disposed" of Harry's parents in a way that was brutal, but cut and dried. Then when her mother died six months later it "made an enormous difference, uh, because I was living it – I was living what I had just – what I had just written." [Read the exact quote from "Harry Potter and Me," 2001]
• JKR: "The Mirror of Erised is absolutely entirely drawn from my own experience of losing a parent. "Five more minutes, just please God, give me five more minutes." It’ll never be enough." [Read the exact quote from "Harry Potter and Me," 2001]
• The point of Chapter Ten (Book 1) is that death is "tougher on the living and you’ve just got to get past it." Death is the books' "most important theme." [Read the exact quote from "Harry Potter and Me," 2001]
• JKR: "If you are writing about evil, which I am, and if you are writing about someone who’s, essentially, a psychopath – you have a duty to show the real evil of taking human life." [Read the exact quote from "Harry Potter and Me," 2001]
• JKR on the last chapter of book 7: "this is really where I wrap everything up, it’s the epilogue. And I, I basically say what happens to everyone after they leave school – those who survive – because there are deaths – more deaths coming." [Read the exact quote from "Harry Potter and Me," 2001]
• She says this about writing the death in book 5: JKR: "Yeah. Well I had re-written the death, re-written it and that was it. It was definitive. And the person was definitely dead. And I walked into the kitchen crying and Neil said to me, 'What on earth is wrong?' and I said, 'Well, I've just killed the person.' Neil doesn't know who the person is. But I said, 'I've just killed the person.' And he said, 'Well, don't do it then.' I thought, 'a doctor' you know, and I said 'Well it just doesn't work like that. You are writing children's books, you need to be a ruthless killer.'" [Read the exact quote from cBBC Newsnight, 2003]
• "I think what I was trying to do with the death in this book [OotP] was show how very arbitrary and sudden death is. This is a death where you didn't have a big death bed scene. It happened almost accidentally and that is one of the very cruel things about death and they're now in a war situation where that really does happen, where one minute you're talking to your friend and the next minute he's gone. It's so shocking and so inexplicable… "Where did they go?" I found it upsetting to write, because I knew what it would mean to Harry." [Read the exact quote from Royal Albert Hall, 2003]
• To see the Thestrals, the death that you have witnessed has to have "sunk in." One of the reasons for this is that JK didn’t want to have to introduce them at the end of GOF and not explain them. [Read the exact quote from Royal Albert Hall, 2003]
• Why couldn't Harry see Thestrels before book 5? JKR: It is only after he sees Cedric die that Harry "really feels what death means." [Read the exact quote from Jo's website]
• Does the prophecy mean that both Harry and Voldemort need to die? JKR: "Both Madam Trelawney and I worded the prophecy extremely carefully"[Read the exact quote from Jo's website]
• We should be asking "Why didn't Voldemort die?" Not, "Why did Harry live?" but, "Why didn't Voldemort die?" The killing curse rebounded, so he should have died. Why didn't he? At the end of Goblet of Fire he says that one or more of the steps that he took enabled him to survive. You should be wondering what he did to make sure that he did not die — I will put it that way. I don't think that it is guessable. It may be — someone could guess it — but you should be asking yourself that question, particularly now that you know about the prophesy. [Read the exact quote from Edinburgh Book Festival, 2004]
• The second question we should be asking is "why Dumbledore did not kill or try to kill Voldemort in the scene in the ministry." Dumbledore did not give the real reason. [Read the exact quote from Edinburgh Book Festival, 2004]
• Harry did not see his parents die because he was in his cot [crib]. [Read the exact quote from Edinburgh Book Festival, 2004]
• More characters are going to die (in Book 6 and/or Book 7, she did not specify). [Read the exact quote from Jo's website]
• Wizards have ways of making sure their voices are heard from beyond the grave. [Read the exact quote from Jo's website]
• The last part of the prophecy does not mean that Neville and Harry must kill each other. [Read the exact quote form Jo's website]
• In choosing which child to kill (Neville or Harry) Voldemort was "choosing which boy to anoint as the Chosen One." [Read the exact quote form Jo's website]
• Harry's parents were "able" and "prepared to die for their son." [Read the exact quote form Jo's website]
• Barbara Marcus says "Someone dies [in Book 6] but it's not Harry or Voldemort." [read source for quote from Reuters News Agency, 2005]
• Jim Dale on Book 6: "I do know who dies." [Read the exact Jim Dale quote from report on BookExpo America, 2005]
• Voldemort's boggart would be "death, ignominious death .... He would see himself dead." He sees death as a "shameful human weakness." [Read the whole quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• "Draco would not have killed Dumbledore." [Read the whole quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• JK won't tell us if Dumbledore was planning to die. "I have to give people hope." [Read the whole quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• Grindelwald is dead; JK won’t say if he is important or not. [Read the entire quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005] \
• JK intended to draw a parallel to World War II when she chose the date for Grindelwald’s death (1945). [Read the entire quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• The veil was created hundreds and hundreds of years ago at the same time the Ministry was created. It is only used for the research of death and not for executions. [Read the entire quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• Harry’s Evans grandparents died natural deaths. There is “nothing sinister” about their deaths. [Read the entire quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• James was born to parents who were elderly, even by wizarding standards, and died from a wizarding illness. There is “nothing sinister” about their deaths. [Read the entire quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• Dumbledore's guesses about how to kill Voldemort are “never very far wide of the mark.” Harry will need to get rid of four horcruxes, and then “go for Voldemort.” Dumbledore has given Harry “some pretty valuable clues” and Harry "has amassed more knowledge than he realizes." [Read the entire quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• JK won’t tell us if anyone else was present in Godric’s Hollow the night Harry’s parents were killed. [Read the entire quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005]
• JK was "seriously upset" at the end of Book 6. [Read the whole quote from ITV, 2005]
• Wormtail won't kill Lupin. [Read the whole quote from ITV, 2005]
• Peter Pettigrew’s silver hand will not be used to kill Lupin. [Read the exact quote from Jo's website]
• JKR: "The final chapter is hidden away, although it has now changed very slightly. One character got a reprieve, but I have to say two [main characters] die that I didn't intend to die." [Read the whole quote from R&J, 2006]
• JKR: "I've never been tempted to kill [Harry] off before the end of book 7. [...] But I can completely understand the mentality of an author who thinks "well I am going to kill them off because that means there can be no non-author written sequels as they call them, so it will end with me and after I am dead and gone." [Read the whole quote from R&J, 2006]
• Jo can understand why an author would want to kill off their character 'from a point of view of not allowing others to continue writing after the original author is dead '. [Read the whole quote from RCMH-pressconf, 2006]
• She didn't enjoy killing the character who dies at the end of book 6, but it wasn't quite as poignant as we may have imagined because she had planned it for years and had already done her grieving. [Read the whole quote from RCMH-pressconf, 2006]
• Dumbledore had to die because 'In these sort of epic sagas, the hero eventually has to fight alone', although Harry still has his two faithful sidekicks. Fundamentally, Jo is saying 'the old wizard always gets it'. [Read the whole quote from RCMH-pressconf, 2006]
• JKR: "A couple of characters I expected to survive have died and one character got a reprieve." [Read the whole quote from RCMH-pressconf, 2006]
• Hermione would see the trio “alive and unscathed and Voldemort finished” in the Mirror of Erised. She may also see herself in a romantic embrace. [Read the whole quote from RCMH1, 2006]
• Harry believes that Draco would not have killed Dumbledore even if he had all the time in the world.  Indeed he would not have; this will have implications for Draco’s future. [Read the whole quote from RCMH1, 2006]
• Dumbledore will not “do a Gandalf;” he is truly dead. [Read the whole quote from RCMH2, 2006]
• JKR: "My books are largely about death. They open with the death of Harry's parents. There is Voldemort's obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal of anyone with magic. I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We're all frightened of it." [Read the whole quote from Tatler, 2006]