Quotes
- Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.
- I wish life was not so short, he thought. languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.
- If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
- It's the job that's never started takes longest to finish.
- It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
- I am told that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.
- A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.
- Her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes bright, and she could sing--and dance. ~On Edith Tolkien
- The bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting by which the trees might really march to war.
- 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.
- A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, but there he came walking through the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir.
- "Do you think Shelob is a good name for a monstrous spider creature? It is of course only "She+lob" (=spider), but written as one, it seems to be quite noisome." ~On the origins of Shelob's name (from a letter to Christopher Tolkien)