your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
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 so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared. One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by
working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.
There 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 them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
如果能够让时光倒流，我会告诉21岁的自己，幸福在于懂得人生不是收获和成就的清单。你的资格证书或你的简历，并不是你的生活;尽管你将遇到很多我这样年纪、甚至比我更老的人，他们却还分不清楚两者间的区别。生活是严酷的，也是复杂的，更不处于任何人的掌控;谦逊的懂得并接受这一点，会帮助安然你度过生活中的风浪。
也许你们会以为，我之所以选择第二个主题——想象力的重要性，是因为想象力在我重筑人生时发挥了巨大作用。但这并不是全部的原因。我固然到死也会捍卫睡前故事的价值，但我还认识到要在更为广阔的范围内珍视想象力。想象
力是人类独有的预见未知的能力，它还是所有发明创造的源泉。它具有已被证实的最富变革性和启示性的力量，而正是想象力让我们能够切身体会他人的经验——虽然我们自己并未身临其境。
对我影响最为深远的经历发生在哈里波特之前，而这一经历为我后来完成著作提供了很多信息。我在最早的全日制工作中获得了启示。在二十几岁的时候，我在位于伦敦的国际特赦组织总部的研究部门工作，以获得付房租的钱，而午餐的时候我就溜掉去写小说。
在那里，我坐在小小的办公室里阅读来自集权统治下的地区的信件。男人和女人们急切的写下潦草的文字，将信偷偷寄出来，冒着坐牢的风险告诉外界自己遭受了怎样的对待。我看到那些无声无息地失踪了的人的照片，是由他们的绝望的亲人和朋友寄到特赦组织来的。我读着被严刑拷打的受害人的证词，看着记录他们的惨状的照片。我打开手写的亲眼见证的记录，记载着对于绑架和强奸案件的简单审讯和执行。 Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they
had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him 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 happiness. And 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 since. The 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 her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a