In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?

The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all.

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.

Books ought to have good endings.How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?

You aren't nearly through this adventure yet.

When he heard there was nothing to eat, he sat down and wept… “Why did I ever wake up!” he cried.