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

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...

I’m sorry, Pippin, but you really must wait till the morning. I’ll be as curious as you like after breakfast, and I’ll help you in any way I can at wizard-wheedling. But I can’t keep...

What would a racist call werewolves? Wargs? She kind of liked that one, but suspected that racist bastards didn’t read Tolkien.

J.R.R.Tolkien has confessed that about a third of the way through The Fellowship of the Ring, some ruffian named Strider confronted the hobbits in an inn, and Tolkien was in despair. He didn’t know who...

He did not go much further, but sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness, for a long while. He thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own...

Then holding the star aloft and the bright sword advanced, Frodo, hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes.

I am reading The Lord of the Rings. I suddenly wanted to. I almost know it by heart, but I can still sink right into it. I know no other book that is so much...

Well, you can go on looking forward,” said Gandalf. “There may be many unexpected feasts ahead of you.

false hopes are more dangerous than fears.

Heaven is not a republic.

These folk are hewers of trees and hunters of beasts; therefore we are their unfriends, and if they will not depart we shall afflict them in all ways that we can.

The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.

And there’s no sex, hardly any love stuff at all, in Middle Earth, which always made me think, yes, the world would be better off without it.

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...