Quotes

"American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge." - from a letter in 1953 to Robert Murray, a Jesuit priest, in the book, 'The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien' (1981)

'The Lord of the Rings' is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and symbolism.

It's a job that's never started that takes the longest to finish.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

...The Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination - not the small reach of their courage or latent power.

I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food...and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats...

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

Little by little, one travels far.

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

I do not love the bright sword for it's sharpness, nor the arrow for it's swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.

The wise speak only of what they know.

A single dream is worth more than a thousand realities.

There is one criticism of the Lord of the Rings I keep hearing, that I agree with, that it is too short.

He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.

In my story I do not deal in Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is Zero. I do not think that at any rate any 'rational being' is wholly evil.

In August 1945: The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace'.

There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.

Well, we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.

In 1957: I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man!

The Lord of the Rings / Is one of those things: / If you like it you do / If you don't, then you boo!

On the death of C.S. Lewis in 1963: So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age-like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.

(In January 1945) Well, the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter - leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machine are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. What's their next move?

It is impossible for an author still writing to be fair to another author working along the same lines. At least I find it so. In fact I dislike "Dune" with some intensity, and in that unfortunate case it is much the best and fairest to another author to keep silent and refuse to comment.

I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.

A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.

Every morning I wake up and think: good, another 24 hours' pipe-smoking.

The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter's power.

It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.

(In 1944) There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! What of the writer? The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.