Wraiths! Wraiths on wings!

No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.

Middle-earth is our world. I have (of course) placed the action in a purely imaginary (though not wholly impossible) period of antiquity, in which the shape of the continental masses was different.

Dead men are not friends to living men, and give them no gifts. (Ghan-buri-Ghan, of allies during war)

I have no help to send, therefore I must go myself.

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.