tolkien

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

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

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 in the lower fields... and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?

Slowly the lights of the torches in front of Merry flicked and went out, and he was walking in a darkness; and he thought: __his is a tunnel leading to a tomb; there we shall stay forever._ But suddenly into his dream there fell a living voice. __ell, Merry! Thank goodness I have found you!_ He looked up and the mist before his eyes cleared a little. There was Pippin! They were face to face in a narrow lane, but for themselves it was empty. He rubbed his eyes. __here is the king?_ He said. __nd Eowyn?_ Then he stumbled and sat down on a doorstep and began to weep again. __hey must have gone up into the Citadel,_ said Pippin. __ think you must have fallen asleep on your feet and taken the wrong turning. When we found out you were not with them, Gandalf sent me to look for you. Poor old Merry! How glad I am to see you again! But you are worn out, and I won__ bother you with any talk. But tell me, are you hurt, or wounded?_ __o,_ said Merry. __ell, no, I don__ think so. But I can__ use my right arm, Pippin, not since I stabbed him. And my sword burned away like a piece of wood._ Pippin__ face was anxious. __ell, you had better come with me as quick as you can,_ he said. __ wish I could carry you. You aren__ fit to walk any further. They shouldn__ have let you walk at all; but you must forgive them. So many dreadful things have happened in the City, Merry, that one poor hobbit coming in from battle is easily overlooked._ __t__ not always a misfortune being overlooked,_ said Merry. __ was overlooked just now by__o, no, I can__ speak of it. Help me, Pippin! It__ all going dark again, and my arm is so cold._ __ean on me, Merry lad!_ said Pippin. __ome now. Foot by foot. It__ not far._ __re you going to bury me?_ said Merry. __o, indeed!_ said Pippin, trying to sound cheerful, though his heart was wrung with fear and pity. __o, we are going to the Houses of Healing.

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 is strong;The heart is bold that looks on gold;The dwarves no more shall suffer wrong.The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,While hammers fells like ringing bellsIn places deep, where dark things sleep,In hollow halls beneath the fells.-from The Hobbit (Dwarves Battle Song)

In describing a fairy story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: 'this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty'. But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that begun thus: 'this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy'; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate.

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 have been given freedom. Act, and act well until you reach your final scene.

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

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

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

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 kitchen at home - for he could feel inside that it was high time for some meal or other; but that only made him miserabler.

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__e 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__ know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don__ have enough myths of our own, we__l 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__ 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.

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.

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 he lost, what he longed for he won not;and full friendship he found not easily,nor was lightly loved for his looks were sad.He was gloom-hearted, and glad seldomfor the sundering sorrow that filled his youth...(On Turin Turambar - The Children of Hurin)

...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 perhaps. Some of its admirers have tried to make it into a religion book by claiming, among other things, that the Ring of Power which must be destroyed is the hydrogen bomb. Tolkien, on the other hand, denied this unequivocally. But intended or otherwise, there can be little doubt that for many it has become a religious book. The "Frodo Lives" buttons are not entirely a joke, because something at least comes to life through those fifteen hundred pages, although inevitably it is hard to say just what. It seems to have something to do with the way Tolkien has of making us see the quididity of things like wood, bread, stone, milk, iron, as though we have never seen them before or not for a long time, which is probably the truth of the matter; his landscapes set deeper echoes going in us than any message could. He gives us back a sense that we have mostly lost of the things of the earth, and because we are ourselves of the earth, whatever else, we are given back too some sense of our own secret. Very possibly again he did not intend it. I may well be axiomatic that, religiously, a writer achieves most when he is least conscious of doing so. Certainly the attempt to be religious is as doomed as the attempt to be poetic is.

Half the world is wandering, the other half is lost.

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 happens to man is natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it he would sense to it an unjustifiable violation.' Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord Of The Rings

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 (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. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand.