Quotes About Tolkien

Those who love Tolkien are almost always good people, honest people. Some are Hobbit-like and some are Elvish, but none are Orcish. Not all Tolkien haters are Orcs, but all Orcs are Tolkien haters.

Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn't go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past; and what's more he doesn't allow girls or women any important part in the story at all. Life is bigger and more interesting than The Lord of the Rings thinks it is.

The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.

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

Tolkien had sent him a poem called "Kortirion Among the Trees". Kortirion represented Warwick in the early stages of Tolkien's mythology, and was the chief town, complete with tower, in a region of elms (Warwickshire) on the Lonely Island (England).

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.

Gandalf never had this kind of problem. He had exactly this problem, actually, standing in front of the hidden Dwarf door to Moria. Remember when . . . I sighed. Sometimes my inner monologue annoys even me. "Edro, edro," I muttered. "Open." I rubbed at the bridge of my nose and ventured, "Mellon." Nothing happened. The wards stayed. I guessed the Corpsetaker had never read Tolkien. Tasteless bitch.

The man once wrote: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Tolkien had that one mostly right. I stepped forward, let the door bang closed, and snarled, "Fuck subtle.

Tolkien regretted the degeneration of real curiosity and enthusiasm, and called for research motivated by love of knowledge rather than hunger for a job.

Tolkien believed that while myth and fairy tale must reflect religious truth, they must do so subtly, never depicting religion as it appears in "the known form of the primary 'real' world.

Flying across the faces of the buildings, the shadows resemble dragons, as if Texas has gone Tolkien.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers.

Ónen i-estel edain, ú-chebin estel anim. (I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept none for myself.) (Gilraen's linnod)

The Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination.

And therefore a giant hammer of pure stupidity lashed out of the screen and felled me again. I lay mewling, clutching my head with my sweaty hands, whimpering for my Mommy to make it stop. MAKE IT STOP! But it did not stop. It. Did. Not. Stop. -- The Desolation of Tolkien

Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back. Screw Gandalf. He had a great death and the characters should have had to go on without him.

The 'Elves' are 'immortal', at least as far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with the griefs and burdens of deathlessness in time and change, than with death.

At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a [Catholic], and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both." Within

Tolkien imagined The Lord of the Rings as a book very much like The Hobbit: aimed at a young audience, built around humor and pranks, and modeled on the structure of a folktale or fairy story. He even called it "the Hobbit sequel" or "the new Hobbit." He

As Tolkien points out, the name is "a pleasantly ingenious pun," referring to those who "dabble in ink." It also suggests people "with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas.

When I say narrative, I do not mean simply the plot, I mean considerably more. Plots and their shapes--the bare outlines of stories--were something I know J.R.R. Tolkien himself was interested in. When I was an undergraduate, I went to a course of lectures he gave on the subject--at least, I think that was the subject, because Tolkien was all but inaudible. He evidently hated lecturing, and I suspect he also hated giving his thoughts away.

Most fantasy is incredibly derivative of Tolkien, so when you read a lot of fantasy, it's really just elves and gnomes, and it all goes back to Tolkien.

Fantasy films tend to skew towards what Tolkien fantasy was, which is that the humans, the Hobbits and the cute creatures are the good guys, and everything that's ugly are the bad guys.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1937)