Hammer and tongs! I am so torn between rage and joy, that if I do not burst, it will be a marvel!

I am rather tired, and no longer young enough to pillage the night to make up for the deficit of hours in the day..." JRR Tolkien, Letter # 174

For you do not yet know the strengths of your hearts, and you cannot foresee what each may meet on the road.

I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke the mountain-side where he smote it in his ruin.

Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.

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.

For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more--remembering my own sins and follies; and realize that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words.