Quotes About Fantasy Tolkien

#1. I'm a huge fan of Tolkien. I read those books when I was in junior high school and high school, and they had a profound effect on me. I'd read other fantasy before, but none of them that I loved like Tolkien.

George R R Martin

#2. I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#3. Fantasy has had some problems with being too repetitive, in my opinion. I try to read what other people are doing - and say, 'How can I add to this rather than just recycle it? How can I stand on Tolkien's shoulders rather than stand tied to his kneecaps?'

Brandon Sanderson

#4. The success that the Tolkien books had redefined modern fantasy.

George R R Martin

#5. The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#6. Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#7. The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and be able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#8. Everyone in the '80s was reading Tolkien; he invented this whole medieval fantasy genre.

William Kircher

#9. You know you've written a good book when even the people who hate it admit it's entertaining.

Sully Tarnish

#10. My mind does not change with the rising and setting of a few suns

J.R.R. Tolkien

#11. Curse us and crush us, my precious is lost!

J.R.R. Tolkien

#12. The treacherous are ever distrustful.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#13. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil. - Gandalf the Grey, The Return of the King

J.R.R. Tolkien

#14. I think a servant of the enemy would look fairer and feel fouler.
-Frodo Baggins

J.R.R. Tolkien

#15. Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape? ... If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!

J.R.R. Tolkien

#16. For nothing is evil in the beginning.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#17. Building on the work of George Macdonald, William Morris and Edward Plunkett, what became known as high fantasy was more or less invented by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Adrian McKinty

#18. In this Music [the singing of the angels in harmony] the World was begun; for Iluvatar made visible the song of the Ainur,and they beheld it as a light in the darkness.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#19. I hope I never smell the smell of apples again!" said Fili. "My tub was full of ut. To smell apples everlastingly when you can scarcely move and are cold and sick with hunger is maddening. I could eat anything in the wide world now for hours on end - but not an apple!

J.R.R. Tolkien

#20. To be a convincing story, you've got to know what you're talking about. In EVERY detail.
-Rayner Unwin

Jeff Shanley

#21. Most modern fantasy just rearranges the furniture in Tolkien's attic.

Terry Pratchett

#22. Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars, not if you care for such things.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#23. Wizards was my homage to Tolkien in the American idiom. I had read Tolkien, understood Tolkien, and wanted to do a sort of fantasy for American kids, and that was Wizards.

Ralph Bakshi

#24. His rage passes description - the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#25. Elves are wondrous fair to look upon.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#26. And so they stood on the walls of the City of Gondor, and a great wind rose and blew, and their hair, raven and golden, streamed out mingling in the air.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#27. If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don't read big Tolkienesque fantasies - Tolkien didn't read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff.

Neil Gaiman

#28. Like his fellow genius, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis has redefined the nature of fantasy, adding richness beauty, and dimension ... In our times, every fantasy realm must be measured in comparison with Narnia.

Lloyd Alexander

#29. How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand ... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#30. Struck by lightning! Struck by lightning!

J.R.R. Tolkien

#31. Consensus wisdom has it that all modern commercial fantasy novels fall into two camps: those derived from J.R.R. Tolkien and those derived from Mervyn Peake. The 'Lord of the Rings' template or the 'Gormenghast' mold.

Paul Di Filippo

#32. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
- Gandalf the Grey, The Fellowship of the Ring

J.R.R. Tolkien

#33. Tolkien is considered the grandfather of fantasy and, for me, I consider myself the grandson, with Terry Brooks as the kind of crazy uncle of fantasy, being the one who brought me into it.

Peter V. Brett

#34. Ask not the elves for advice, because they will tell you both 'yes' and 'no'.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#35. Fly, you fools!' he cried, and was gone.

J.R.R. Tolkien

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

J.R.R. Tolkien

#37. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the happy ending.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#38. Shhhhh, I am trying to read.

Anna Del C. Dye

#39. Most fantasy is incredibly derivative of Tolkien, so when you read a lot of fantasy, it's really just elves and gnomes, and it all goes back to Tolkien.

John Orloff

#40. Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#41. But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while they still endure for eyes to see, are ever their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#42. The key to having good scales is a healthy diet of venison when you're just a wee dragon lad.

Sully Tarnish

#43. Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else ... may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.

J.R.R. Tolkien

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

J.R.R. Tolkien

#45. I fear I am beyond your comprehension. - Gandalf the White

J.R.R. Tolkien

#46. All stories are ultimately about the fall.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#47. True courage is knowing not when to take a life, but to save one.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#48. But in the end it is only a passing thing ... this shadow. Even darkness must pass. - Samwise Gamgee, The Two Towers

J.R.R. Tolkien

#49. I think the tendency to over-explain and over describe is one of the most common failings in fantasy. It's an unfortunate piece of Tolkien's legacy. Don't get me wrong, Tolkien was a great worldbuilder, but he got a little caught up describing his world at times, at the expense of the overall story.

Patrick Rothfuss