Give with a free hand, but give only of your own.

His love for Frodo rose above all other thoughts, and forgetting his peril he cried aloud: ‘I’m coming Mr. Frodo!

Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn’t go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and...

Both [Satan and Melkor/Morgoth] are loud in their defiance, claiming that they would “rather rule in hell than serve in heaven”. One might have admired these rebel angels if one believed their defiance was in...

So, though there was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the museum at Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it...

His rage passes description – the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before...

Do you dislike your role in the story, your place in the shadow? What complaints do you have that the hobbits could not have heaved at Tolkien? You have been born into a narrative, you...

Well, you have now, Sam, dear Sam,’ said Frodo, and he lay back in Sam’s gentle arms, closing his eyes, like a child at rest when night-fears are driven away by some loved voice or...

Tolkien didn’t just write ‘The Hobbit,’ he created a whole world.

But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.No, said Tolkien, they are not….just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.We have come from God...

Frodo gave a cry, and there was, fallen upon his knees at the chasm’s edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. “Precious, precious,...

But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while they still endure for eyes to see, are ever their own record, and only...

And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies...

Goodbye, master, my dear! Forgive your Sam. He’ll come back to this spot when the job’s done – if he manages it. And then he’ll not leave you again. Rest you quiet till I come;...

The cry that ‘fantasy is escapist’ compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are ‘escapist’ compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer:...

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out...

…With a religious book it is less what we see in it than what we see through it that matters. J. R. R. Tolkien’s fairy-tale epic the Lord of the Rings helps draw the distinction...

How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand… there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep.

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and...

No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above...

While persistence offers no guarantees, it does give ‘luck’ a chance to operate.

Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death. . .. . . (quoting an obituary) ‘There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that ever...

I’m a hobbit!

Grief is a hone to a hard mind.

Aw, fudge,’ floated down to me, as a couple of golden eyes peered over a third-floor window ledge. ‘You’re a freaking dhampir. Why are you reading Tolkien?’I shrugged, then had to dodge the potted geranium...

Under the Mountain dark and tallThe King has come unto his hall!His foe is dead,the Worm of Dread,And ever so his foes shall fall.The sword is sharp, the spear is long,The arrow swift, the Gate...

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity...

This, since junior school, had been virtually my only experience of women—as fantasy figures. Reading about women in fantasy novels had set me an even more unrealistic point of view. The Lord of the Rings...

Smeagol won’t grub for roots and carrotses and – taters. What’s taters,precious, eh, what’s taters?””Po-ta-toes!” said Sam.

You could fire a machine gun randomly through the pages of Lord of the Rings and never hit any women.

Slowly the lights of the torches in front of Merry flicked and went out, and he was walking in a darkness; and he thought: ‘This is a tunnel leading to a tomb; there we shall...

You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you yourself keep it....

All medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next...

It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me.

Tolkien came to regard the tale of Beren and Tinuviel as ‘the first example of the motive (to become dominant in Hobbits) that the great policies of world history, “the wheels of the world”, are...

Shhhhh, I am trying to read.

..But for long years we healers have only sought to patch the rents made by the men of swords. Though we should still have enough to do without them: the world is full enough of...

The man once wrote: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Tolkien had that one mostly right.I stepped forward, let the door bang closed, and snarled,...

My name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in...

He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day’s...

Deeply rooted in the universalist Western tradition of the Stoics and the the early medieval Christians, Tolkien created a myth to explore the nature of the human person against the avaricious dreams of the capitalists...

Perhaps it is better not to tell what you wish. if you cannot have it.

Far over the Great River, and the Brown Lands, leagues upon grey leagues away, the dawn came, red as flame. Loud rang the hunting horns to greet it. The Riders of Rohan sprang suddenly to...

To be a convincing story, you’ve got to know what you’re talking about. In EVERY detail.”-Rayner Unwin

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works,...

Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley...

myth,” like religion, merely signifies a comfortable and entrenched lie. For the postmodernist, myth simply represents one story, one narrative among many; it is purely subjective, certainly signifying nothing of transcendent or any other kind...

As a lord was heldfor the strength of his body and stoutness of heart.Much lore he learned, and loved wisdombut fortune followed him in few desires;oft wrong and awry what he wrought turned;what he loved...

A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken. An overwhelming longing to rest...

The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it’s perfect. It’s this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It’s not, I’m pretty sure, actually true, but that makes...