J. r. r. tolkien

Don't go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you'll land in trouble too big for you.

I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me.

A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary 'real' world.

A friend of mine tells that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.

The original 'Hobbit' was never intended to have a sequel - Bilbo 'remained very happy to the end of his days and those were extraordinarily long': a sentence I find an almost insuperable obstacle to...

Middle English is an exciting field - almost uncharted, I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention on to any little corner of it, the received notions and ideas seem to...

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited 'first chapters'. I have indeed written many.

I don't like allegories.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it's my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.