My interpretation of this quote really changed my perspective on everything, I’m starting to think when you die, you see what you want to see, you see what comforts you.

What are your thoughts?

How do you understand this quote?

What is the reality of Harry's King's Cross?

It's Joanne Rowling's favourite quote. I've read an interview where she says that has waited seventeen years to be able to use these lines. She has said it is key to the last book and the series. So it must be worth it to unpack what is in there.

Harry asks this question, because his experience at King's Cross is so unreal for him. He gives an alternative, this is all happening inside his head.

On a certain level, we can read this as Rowling speaking directly us, muggles, to the person who has picked up the book, as a self-conscious statement about the totality of the series.

I do not think it means to believe that fantasy, magic and dragons exist in reality. That is like Xenophilius who believes in the elusive Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

I understand the quote as that what you imagine, the nous, is the creative principle that bringing things into 'reality'. We first have to imagine things, before they become our reality. The words of Albus become real by acting on it. And when Harry returns, he has decided that this conversation is real.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poet and an important person in literary alchemy, has proposed the thesis of mentalism that is prevalent in fantasy literature, like Tolkien and Lewis. That is: "imagined things are real".

We can reduce our thoughts to brain and nerve cell chemistry, we could say that what happens inside our head belong to the same domain of reality that happens outside the head.

But I think that this isn't what Dumbledore/Rowling meant. It's too neuroscience-oriented.

Is there maybe a connection between this quote and the Tale of the Three Brothers?