J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE, FRSL, known by his pen name J. R. R. Tolkien, was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor who is best known as the author of the classic high-fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 January 1892
real drawing wish
Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.
stories maps complicated
If you're going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise you'll never make a map of it afterwards.
helping
I have no help to send, therefore I must go myself.
hurt hands evil
What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!' Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.
world happened untrue
Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?
eye gay eagles
So it ends as I guessed it would,' his thoughts said, even as it fluttered away; and it laughed a little within him ere it fled, almost gay it seemed to be casting off all doubt and care and fear. And even as it winged away into forgetfulness it heard voices, and they seemed to be crying in some forgotten world far above: 'The eagles are coming! The eagles are coming!' For one moment more Pippin's thought hovered. "Bilbo! But no! That came in his tale, long long ago. This is my tale, and it ended now. Good-bye!' And his thought fled far away and his eyes saw no more.
stars laughter lying
It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.
troll suspicious
Trolls are slow in the uptake, and mighty suspicious about anything new to them.
letters receiving difficult
For some time I lived in fear of receiving a letter signed 'S. Gollum'. That would have been more difficult to deal with.
odds people impossible
I've always been impressed that we are here, surviving, because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.
dream venice lovely
Venice seemed incredibly lovely, elvishly lovely--to me like a dream of Old Gondor, or Pelargir of the Numenorean Ships, before the return of the Shadow.
war soldier superiors
My 'Sam Gamgee' is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself.
wings mind links
They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially, even apart from the necessities of life, since the mind would wing to the other pole and spread itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'.
mean light people
It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.