Tolkien Quotes

1. "This is surely the most significant of the elements that Tolkien brought to fantasy.... his arranged marriage between the Elder Edda and "The Wind in the Willows"--big Icelandic romance and small-scale, cozy English children's book. The story told by "The Lord of the Rings" is essentially what would happen if Mole and Ratty got drafted into the Nibelungenlied."
Author: Adam Gopnik

2. "We should affirm the great value of reading just for the fun of it. . . . In my experience, Christians are strangely reluctant to take this advice. We tend to be earnest people, always striving for self-improvement, and can be suspicious of mere recreation. But God doesn't just create, he takes delight in his creation, and expects us to delight in it too; and since he has given us the desire to make things ourselves—has allowed us to be "sub-creators," as J. R. R. Tolkien says--we may rightly take delight in the things that we (and others) make. Reading for the sheer delight of it—reading at whim—is therefore one of the most important kinds of reading there is."
Author: Alan Jacobs

3. "On Tolkien: "His fussiness threatened to overwhelm his creativity."
Author: Alister E. McGrath

4. "There's no two ways about it, Tolkien fans are a funny bunch. I should know, for I was one of them. Been there, done that, read the book, gone mad. I first took on The Lord of the Rings at the age of eleven or twelve; to be precise, I began it at the age of eleven and finished at the age of twelve. It was, and remains, not a book that you happen to read, like any other, but a book that happens to you: a chunk bitten out of your life. (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001...)"
Author: Anthony Lane

5. "There's a passage about ‘rivers of molten rock that wound their way… until they cooled and lay like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth.' That's a perfect description: how did Tolkien know, a quarter century before anyone ever saw a picture of Io? Talk about Nature imitating Art."
Author: Arthur C. Clarke

6. "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 and the diabolical schemes of the national and international socialists, all of whom would replace God with man."
Author: Bradley J. Birzer

7. "Fantasy has had some problems with being too repetitive, in my opinion. I try to read what other people are doing - and say, 'How can I add to this rather than just recycle it? How can I stand on Tolkien's shoulders rather than stand tied to his kneecaps?'"
Author: Brandon Sanderson

8. "Hence the uneasiness which they arouse in those who, for whatever reason, wish to keep us wholly imprisoned in the immediate conflict. That perhaps is why people are so ready with the charge of "escape." I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, "What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and hostile to, the idea of escape?" and gave the obvious answer: jailers."
Author: C.S. Lewis

9. "We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I In a Berkshire bar. The big workman Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe All the evening, from his empty mug With gleaming eye glanced towards us: "I seen 'em myself!" he said fiercely."
Author: C.S. Lewis

10. "Look at this fog. The damp gets right into your bones. It's doing my chest no good at all. I'll need a vapour bath." Bryant pulled down his scarf and peered over the sodden hedge. Dew had formed on his bald head and ears. He resembled a minor Tolkien character. "You're getting old before your time," warned May. "I can't imagine what you'll look like in your eighties." "I'm ageing gracefully, which means not trying to look like a member of Concrete Blimp." "I assume you mean Led Zeppelin..."
Author: Christopher Fowler

11. "There were two books I remember changing my life as a introverted, bookish 14 year old. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. One was set in a fantastic world, populated by outlandish characters,tired prose, foul monsters, evil incarnate and a message about losing one's humanity. The other book was about hobbits."
Author: Christopher Odell Homsley

12. "Straightening, I asked, "What do you believe in?""Old love songs, best friends, the collected works of J.R.R.Tolkien, crispy pork egg rolls with just the right amount of grease, the Big Boss and eternity.""The Big Boss?"Zachary pointed up, as if to heaven. "Pious,"I teased."
Author: Cynthia Leitich Smith

13. "Contemporary fantasists all bow politely to Lord Tennyson and Papa Tolkien, then step around them to go back to the original texts for inspiration--and there are a lot of those texts. We have King Arthur and his gang in English; we've got Siegfried and Brunhild in German; Charlemagne and Roland in French; El Cid in Spanish; Sigurd the Volsung in Icelandic; and assorted 'myghtiest Knights on lyfe' in a half-dozen other cultures. Without shame, we pillage medieval romance for all we're worth."
Author: David Eddings

14. "En la novela de Tolkien, El señor de los anillos, el hobbit Frodo es un héroe renuente; Frodo no quiere asumir la tarea que le ha sido encomendada; Frodo preferiría quedarse en el Shire y vivir en paz allí. En México muchos Frodos piensan así, actúan así, quieren desentenderse así. Prefieren criticar a quienes gobiernan en vez de involucrarse para hacerlo mejor; eligen la pasividad complaciente en lugar de la participación comprometida. Pero Frodo no tiene otra opción y el ciudadano mexicano tampoco. Frodo tiene la tarea de salvar a su mundo y el ciudadano mexicano tiene la tarea de salvar a su país. Un hobbit insignificante destruye el anillo y un ciudadano mexicano puede hacerlo también. Como dice el mago Gandalf: "Todo lo que tenemos que decidir es qué hacer con el tiempo que nos ha sido dado." Para México es tiempo de preguntar: ¿Y Frodo?"
Author: Denise Dresser

15. "Douglas Adams. Kurt Vonnegut. Neal Stephenson. Richard K. Morgan. Stephen King. Orson Scott Card. Terry Pratchett. Terry Brooks. Bester, Bradbury, Haldeman, Heinlein, Tolkien, Vance, Gibson, Gaiman, Sterling, Moorcock, Scalzi, Zelazny."
Author: Ernest Cline

16. "I was a massive Tolkien fan. 'The Hobbit' was... my favorite book as a little girl, and the Silvan Elves were my favorite characters in the book."
Author: Evangeline Lilly

17. "My first score for 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' was the beginning of my journey into the world of Tolkien, and I will always hold a special fondness for the music and the experience."
Author: Howard Shore

18. "I read all of the books by Tolkien, including 'The Hobbit,' when I was in my twenties, and his deep love of nature and all things green resonates deeply with me."
Author: Howard Shore

19. "J.R.R. Tolkien tells a story of a man who was better at painting leaves than trees. In fact, the leaves he painted were painstaking and exquisite. He continued to feel a pull to make his talent part of something bigger, but the time he would devote to a full masterpiece he selflessly gave to neighbors and friends in need. When he got to Heaven, he was wonder-struck to see the whole tree of which his vision of perfect leaves had been a part."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

20. "Eski zamanlari hatirlayin. Perilere layik Büyük Pasta'nin yapildigi zamanlari; sadece kuyruk isirandan korkan ejderhalari, kötü krallari, topraklarinizda gezinen devleri, azalmaya baslayan sövalyeler dönemini. Ve siz elinizde eski ve üzerinde yazilar bulunan bir kiliçla ejderha avlamak zorunda kalirsaniz..Yapraklari agaçtan daha iyi resmeden türden bir ressamsaniz..Yagmurlu, rüzgarli ve gün isiginin da çekip gittigi bir gece, odanizin içinde açan bir sarmasik yapraginin sesini duyarsaniz.. Elinizi beyaz kabuguna dayadiginiz agaç, bir gün, ''Uzaklara git. Rüzgar senin pesinde. Git ve asla dönme'' derse; Üstünüzde koca bir yorgunluk ve yoksunluk duygusuyla kendinize gelircesine etrafa bakip, ''Niye yalniziz?'' diye sorarsiniz; Küçük bir çocuk elinizi sessizce tutup ''Üzgünüm'' diyecektir.¦ J.R.R. Tolkien - Masallar kitabi Altikirkbes Yayinlari Arka Kapak Yazisi"
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

21. "To walk in Time, perhaps, as men walk on long roads... to see the lie of old and even forgotten lands, to behold ancient men walking, and to hear their languages as they spoke them, in the days before the days, when tongues of forgotten lineage were heard in kingdoms long fallen by the shores of the Atlantic." -- J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lost Road"
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

22. "Kafalari verilerle dolu, ayakta duran ilerlemeci maymunlarla birlikte yürümeyecegim. Kosularinin yöneldigi uçurum apaçik önlerinde durmaktadir, eger, kisir ve anlamsiz yoluna usanmadan baska isimlerle devam etmek yerine, Tanri'ya sükür, ilerleme bir gün sona erecekse. Tozlu düz yolunuzda yürümeyecegim ve yaratici sanatiyla hiçbir ilgisi olmayan siz küçük yaraticilarin o degismez dünyasina sirtimi dönecegim. Ne Demir Taç önünde egilecegim henüz ne de kiracagim küçük altin asami...¦ Tolkien - Mythopoeia Siiri"
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

23. "Kh?i k? dang s?ng dáng ph?i ch?t, và m?t s? k? dã ch?t l?i dáng s?ng. Nguoi có th? trao cái dáng ?y cho b?n h? không? Ð?ng quá nôn nóng khi dua ra l?i phán sinh t?. Vì k? c? b?c nh?t m?c khôn ngoan cung không lu?ng n?i m?i k?t c?c.Gandalf,Ðoàn H? Nh?n (tr 77)Chúa T? Nh?ng Chi?c Nh?nJ.R.R. Tolkien"
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

24. "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 Silmarllion, JRR Tolkien"
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

25. "I am rather tired, and no longer young enough to pillage the night to make up for the deficit of hours in the day..." JRR Tolkien, Letter # 174"
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

26. "If you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things along the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than Frodo did. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there.-- (J.R.R. Tolkien to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955.)"
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

27. "You call a tree a tree, he said, and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a 'tree' until someone gave it that name. You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Out myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbor, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of evil."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

28. "My emotional range is limited. I can't do grief, but rage is my friend. For instance, I hate death by sickness. It is nothing like Homer, the Old Testament, and Tolkien led me to expect. It is not noble and awe-inspiring. No one delivers a final soliloquy. It is as abrupt and banal as the flicking of a switch. The squiggly line on the monitor straightens out, the defibrillator doesn't even go whomp, the epinephrine is useless, the nurse doing CPR looks up and even before the doctor pronounces the words, you know. This is not what death should be. Death, the reason for religion, the subject of great literature, the certainty we spend our lives warding off, the giant mystery that looms over everything we do, death should be spectacular, not pity-inducing, a bang and not a whimper. A huge ball of fire, a shower of sparks, a final charge into the ranks of your enemies, a terrific explosion, a backward dive into the fiery pit. Not. . . this."
Author: Jessica Zafra

29. "I did not buy a book called Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson, which has the temerity to compare itself, on the front cover, to 'Tolkien at his best.' The back cover attributes the quote to the Washington Post, a newspaper whose quotations will always damn a book for me from now on. How dare they? And how dare the publishers? It isn't a comparison anyone could make, except to say 'Compared to Tolkien at his best, this is dross.' I mean you could say that even about really brilliant books like A Wizard of Earthsea. I expect Lord Foul's Bane (horrible title, sounds like a Conan book) is more like Tolkien at his worst, which would be the beginning of The Simarillion.The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect."
Author: Jo Walton

30. "Tolkien understood about the things that happen after the end. Because this is after the end, this is all the Scouring of the Shire, this is figuring out how to live in the time that wasn't supposed to happen after the glorious last stand. I saved the world, or I think I did, and look, the world is still here, with sunsets and interlibrary loans. And it doesn't care about me any more than the Shire cared about Frodo."
Author: Jo Walton

31. "More often than not, however, the person who flatly states 'Elves aren't like that!' is hard pressed to describe how they really look.... as if Tolkien has summoned archetypes from so deep in our minds that we can only recall them incompletely."
Author: John Howe

32. "I have been illustrating Tolkien's books ever since I first read them, long before illustration became my profession."
Author: John Howe

33. "'Lord Of The Rings' fandom was massive, worldwide, entrenched. Generally it had been part of the fans' life all their life, because they had it read to them as children; they'd become Tolkien students."
Author: John Noble

34. "For three years, all through junior high, my social death was grossly overdetermined. I had a large vocabulary, a giddily squeaking voice, horn-rimmed glasses, poor arm strength, too-obvious approval from my teachers, irresistible urges to shout unfunny puns, a near-eidetic acquaintance with J.R.R. Tolkien, a big chemistry lab in my basement, a penchant for intimately insulting any unfamiliar girl unwise enough to speak to me, and so on."
Author: Jonathan Franzen

35. "As a child I was really into fantasy books with elves and goblins and swords, and I went through a phase for a few years when I was reading endless series. But in the end I became totally fed-up with all these sub-Tolkien rip-offs because they all end up doing the same old things and there's no rigour to it."
Author: Jonathan Stroud

36. "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 class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others — even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight."
Author: N.K. Jemisin

37. "If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don't read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn't read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff."
Author: Neil Gaiman

38. "'The Hobbit' by J. R. R. Tolkien was the first book I enjoyed. I was 14 and when I finished I started it again."
Author: Nigel Lythgoe

39. "Elves have this superhuman strength, yet they're so graceful. Tolkien created them to be angelic spirits, but I also saw Legolas as something out of the Seven Samurai."
Author: Orlando Bloom

40. "What would a racist call werewolves? Wargs? She kind of liked that one, but suspected that racist bastards didn't read Tolkien."
Author: Patricia Briggs

41. "I'm the first to admit that I can't be as good as Tolkien, and a movie can never be as good as Tolkien."
Author: Ralph Bakshi

42. "Tu inspiraste Rowling, e foi nas terras de Morpheus que se moldou Hogwarts. Tu inspiraste Tolkien, e foi nas terras de Phantasos que se anexaram as extensões de Terra-Média. Tu inspiraste Lovecraft e em minhas terras se fixou Miskatonic. Então eu te pergunto com sinceridade, anjo: até onde vai tua vontade de ser coadjuvante em um mundo de formas e pensamentos?"
Author: Raphael Draccon

43. "The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them. I meet far too many people who are going to be writers 'someday.' When they are out of high school, when they've finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire . . . That is such a trap You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That's okay. I think we've all 'been there, done that.' It all starts with the writing."
Author: Robin Hobb

44. "All fairy tales, Tolkien argued, echo the gospel of Jesus Christ in some way because the gospel is the True Story; it's the real fairy tale that crashed into the time line of history... ‘The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact,' Lewis wrote"
Author: Sarah Arthur

45. "The ones that landed near the bathroom are Bad Tolkien imitations or transcripts of a D&D adventure; bad Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov are below the television; and these on the bed are the ones whose authors I want to hunt down personally and slap."
Author: Sharyn McCrumb

46. "I responded (and with rather touching wholeheartedness) to the sweep of Tolkien's imagination-to the ambition of his story-but I wanted to write my own kind of story, and had I started then, I would have written his... Thanks to Mr. Tolkien, the twentieth century had all the elves and wizards it needed."
Author: Stephen King

47. "Snow-melt in the stream: Mama Nature turning winter's storms into nourishment for the soil, fecundity, and beauty. This is what I must now learn to do with the stormy weather I've been passing through: turn it into beauty, turn it into art, so new life can germinate and bloom.One example of a creative artist who does this is my friend Jane Yolen, who wrote her exquisite book of poems The Radiation Sonnets while her husband was undergoing treatment for the cancer that would eventually claim his life. This is what all artists must do: take whatever life gives us and "alchemize" it into our art (either directly and autobiographically, as in Jane's book, or indirectly; whatever approach works best), turning darkness into light, spinning straw into gold, transforming pain and hardship into what J.R.R. Tolkien called 'a miraculous grace."
Author: Terri Windling

48. "Literature of escape," Ray Bradbury's work is sometimes called with a sneer. But then, as Tolkien once observed, who other than jailers are fearfully preoccupied with escape? Kirk wrote that the ideologue, in particular, denounces "escape" because he is a prisoner of his own political obsessions, and misery loves company."
Author: Testy McTesterson

49. "Critics and academics have been trying for forty years to bury the greatest work of imaginative fiction in English. They ignore it, they condescend to it, they stand in large groups with their backs to it - because they're afraid of it. They're afraid of dragons. They have Smaugophobia. "Oh those awful Orcs," they bleat, flocking after Edmund Wilson. They know if they acknowledge Tolkien they'll have to admit that fantasy can be literature, and that therefore they'll have to redefine what literature is. And they're too damned lazy to do it."
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

50. "My mother used to read to me every night when I was little. We got through most of the major fantasy books of that time. The Narnia books by C.S. Lewis were my favorites and, later, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I started making dolls to fill in the gaps of the dolls I had. Obviously we couldn't buy centaurs and fauns and elves and fairies, so I made them to play with the normal dolls I had. I must have been about six years old when I started making fantasy dolls."
Author: Wendy Froud

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