Quotes from Humphrey Carpenter

Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.

I can write, He floated up to the ceiling, and a baby rabbit came out of his pocket, grew wings, and flew away. And you will believe that it really happened. That's magic, isn't it?

the ground. Even his mouth was tied so that he couldn't

It can't be Miss Worlock

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.

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

Tolkien believed devoutly that there had once been an Eden on earth, and that man's original sin and subsequent dethronement were responsible for the ills of the world; but his elves, though capable of sin and error, have not 'fallen' in the theological sense, and so are able to achieve much beyond the powers of men. They

The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks.

The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks.

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.

And though he liked drawing trees he liked most of all to be with trees. He would climb them, lean against them, even talk to them. It saddened him to discover the not everyone shared his feelings towards them.

The poet was, of course, always present to assist the debater. Though the logic of Lewis's Christian apologetics may be fallible, the imagination of the writing with its brilliantly-conceived analogies is itself enough to win a reader to his side. As Austin Farrer expressed it, "We think we are listening to an argument; in fact we are presented with a vision; and it is the vision that carries conviction.

It is rather as if some strange spirit had taken on the guise of an elderly professor. The body may be pacing this shabby little suburban room, but the mind is far away, roaming the plains and mountains of Middle-Earth.

Tolkien preserved this postcard carefully, and long afterwards he wrote on the paper cover in which he kept it: 'Origin of Gandalf'.

Gandalf faced and suffered death; and came back or was sent back, as he says, with enhanced power. But though one may be in this reminded of the Gospels, it is not really the same thing at all. The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees. Letter 181 To Michael Straight [drafts]

The Lord of the Rings ] is not as seems widely supposed about 'power'. Power-seeking is only the motive-power that sets events going, and is relatively unimportant, I think. It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality; and the 'escapes': serial longevity, and hoarding memory. Letter 211 To Rhona Beare

I have at last got busy about Mummy's grave. . . . . The inscription I should like is: EDITH MARY TOLKIEN 1889-1971 Lúthien :brief and jejune, except for Lúthien , which says for me more than a multitude of words: for she was (and knew she was) my Lúthien. … I never called Edith Lúthien – but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion . Letter 340 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien

May you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them. G. B. Smith's words were a clear call to Ronald Tolkien to begin the great work that he had been meditating for some time, a grand and astonishing project with few parallels in the history of literature. He was going to create an entire mythology.

One writes such a story not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one's personal compost-heap; and my mould is evidently made largely of linguistic matter.

This love for the memory of the countryside of his youth was later to become a central part of his writing, and it was intimately bound up with his love for the memory of his mother.

I think The Lord of the Rings is in itself a good deal better than The Hobbit , but it may not prove a very fit sequel. It is more grown up—but the audience for which The Hobbit was written has done that also. The readers young and old who clamoured for 'more about the Necromancer are to blame, for the N. is not child's play. Letter 35 To [Publishers] C. A. Furth, Allen & Unwin

Well, there you are: a hobbit amongst the Urukhai. Keep up your hobbitry in heart, and think that all stories feel like that when you are in them. You are inside a very great story! Letter 66 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien

There cannot be any 'story' without a fall – all stories are ultimately about the fall – at least not for human minds as we know them and have them. Letter 130 From a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin

There cannot be any 'story' without a fall – all stories are ultimately about the fall – at least not for human minds as we know them and have them. Letter 131 To Milton Waldman