【正文】 had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected。or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own mencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of being a gay see? If all you remember in years to e is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve e out ahead of Baroness Mary goals: the first step to self , I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and have e up with two this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with back at the 21yearold that I was at graduation, is a slightly unfortable experience for the 42yearold that she has my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write , my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, they hoped that I would take a vocational degree。I wanted to study English promise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics。I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21yearold self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the is difficult, and plicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their opened handwritten, eyewitness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and of my coworkers were expolitical prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their to our offices included those who had e to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had bee mentally ill after all he had endured in his trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with had just ha