The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.

We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.

Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.

Everyone, from the Mother Superior to the priests to my parents--they were so upset and reproachful...I felt as if something they all passionately believed in depended on me carrying on with something I didn't.

I seemed to have spent the whole time either reading, which I loved, or laughing, which I love, or fooling about, which I loved. There was the usual teenage angst: "Nobody understands me" and "I'm the only genius in the world" and all that stuff. But that didn't get very deep.

We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.

...when all the openings were closed, then the worlds would all be restored to their proper relations with one another, Lyra’s Oxford and Will’s would lie over each other again, like transparent images on two sheets of film being moved closer and closer until they merged–although they would never truly touch.