J.K. Rowling, author the Harry Potter novels, once said, “It 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 default.” She went on to say, “Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it is fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew… I was set free because my greatest fear had been realised and I was still alive, and I still had my daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

http://news.harvard,edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech and cited by Ken Costa in Know Your Why, 2016, Nashville Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishing, p.109