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

If you're going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise you'll never make a map of it afterwards.

Good Morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. “What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?

True courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one.

I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure.

I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power--and then we get and are getting slavery.

Where there's life there's hope, and need of vittles.