Quotes About Tolkien

#1. When I told my mom I was going to audition for 'The Hobbit,' she said, 'Well, you've always loved Tolkien.' And she was right.

Richard C. Armitage

#2. One avoids becoming a Tolkien clone precisely by returning to the same roots that inspired The Lord of the Rings.

Michael Moorcock

#3. I read all of the books by Tolkien, including 'The Hobbit,' when I was in my twenties, and his deep love of nature and all things green resonates deeply with me.

Howard Shore

#4. Tolkien is as good as Dickens at sketching a scene.

Ian McKellen

#5. It's almost like an optical illusion, 'The Hobbit.' You look at the book, and it is really thin, and you could make a relatively thin film as well. What I mean by that is that you could race through the story at the speed that Tolkien does.

Peter Jackson

#6. A shelf of classics for our young adults: Tolkien, Hesse, Casteneda, Kerouac, Salinger, Tom Robbins, and _The Last Whole Earth Catalog_.

Edward Abbey

#7. while Tolkien's stories were not historically real, they were true

Devin Brown

#8. 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

#9. One thing Tolkien does incredibly well - and this is from a lay person's point of view; I am not scholar or anything - is that you don't have to make an effort to envisage the worlds that he writes about.

Luke Evans

#10. One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression ... by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead. J.R.R. Tolkien

Nathan Hale

#11. I never liked Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey, and I never liked him coming back. I think it would have been an even stronger story if Tolkien had left him dead.

George R R Martin

#12. That the printer had quietly reset The Fellowship of the Ring, and that copies had been issued without proof having been read by the author, never became known to Tolkien; while his publisher, Rayner Unwin, learned of it only thirty-eight years after the fact.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#13. My first score for 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' was the beginning of my journey into the world of Tolkien, and I will always hold a special fondness for the music and the experience.

Howard Shore

#14. In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf

Christopher Paolini

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

Terry Pratchett

#16. Tolkien fans reacted so strongly to 'Lord Of The Rings' as a franchise because it stayed true; the heart of it was true to the book.

William Kircher

#17. Tolkien had sent him a poem called "Kortirion Among the Trees". Kortirion represented Warwick in the early stages of Tolkien's mythology, and was the chief town, complete with tower, in a region of elms (Warwickshire) on the Lonely Island (England).

Colin Duriez

#18. Do you dislike your role in the story, your place in the shadow? What complaints do you have that the hobbits could not have heaved at Tolkien? You have been born into a narrative, you have been given freedom. Act, and act well until you reach your final scene.

N.D. Wilson

#19. 'Lord Of The Rings' fandom was massive, worldwide, entrenched. Generally it had been part of the fans' life all their life, because they had it read to them as children; they'd become Tolkien students.

John Noble

#20. I dislike Tolkien, another Oxonian Old Norse obsessive, with his war games and made-up language in a world without women.

Sarah Moss

#21. Tolkien tells us that we do not charge into battle because we know we will win. We do so regardless of odds and outcomes, because we have to.

Jessica Zafra

#22. Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them.

Robin Hobb

#23. 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

#24. As Tolkien points out, the name is "a pleasantly ingenious pun," referring to those who "dabble in ink." It also suggests people "with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas.

Diana Pavlac Glyer

#25. I'm trying to suggest a kind of Middle Earth, in Tolkien terms. It's a contiguous world; it's like ours but different.

John Boorman

#26. For a variety of reasons, my books struck the marketplace like a thunderclap; and one of those reasons was that there were so few alternatives available. Readers who loved Tolkien, and who were not satisfied by Terry Brooks, had nowhere else to turn.

Stephen R. Donaldson

#27. What's wonderful about Tolkien and Shakespeare is that they show up your own individual microscope. They're so infinitely vast. You can reinterpret them in so many ways.

Andy Serkis

#28. Eat broccoli. And cauliflower, cabbage, and other stuff that looks like it came out of a mini Tolkien forest.

Steve Edwards

#29. I feel like my imagination was crafted by Tolkien. He seemed to tap into that childhood intrigue of secret doors and hidden worlds.

Richard C. Armitage

#30. The ones that landed near the bathroom are Bad Tolkien imitations or transcripts of a D&D adventure; bad Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov are below the television; and these on the bed are the ones whose authors I want to hunt down personally and slap.

Sharyn McCrumb

#31. Tolkien was quite a religious man, and so is George R.R. Martin. They kind of have this epic quality about them when they write the material.

Sean Bean

#32. 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

#33. I think that when Tolkien created Gollum and the ring, he even expressed in his biography that he never really knew what he created until he went back and looked at it.

Richard C. Armitage

#34. The Tolkien estate owns the writings of Professor Tolkien. 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' were sold by Professor Tolkien in the late '60s, the film rights.

Peter Jackson

#35. I don't steal stories. If I'm a plagiarist, so is Hitchcock. And Tolkien. And Shakespeare.

Kerry Greenwood

#36. Our daughter's name Arwynn comes from Arwen in 'Lord of the Rings' because my wife and I met for the first time in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford where J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis used to go to read out their stories to one another.

Adrian McKinty

#37. I was born in Amersham, England on 6/4/58. My family moved to Australia when I was eight, and I went to Box Hill High School and then Melbourne High School. I liked to draw and write at school, and I liked books by J.R.R. Tolkien, A.A. Milne and Kenneth Grahame.

Graeme Base

#38. There was a series called 'Game of Thrones' which was very popular here in the United States, a post-Tolkien kind of thing. It was garbage, yet very addictive garbage - because there's lots of violence, all the women take their clothes off all the time, and it's kind of fun.

Salman Rushdie

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

William Kircher

#40. When someone writes something dazzlingly brilliant, people want to imitate it. The result is a lot of less-than-brilliant knock-offs. Elves, Dwarves, Goblin army, cursed ring, evil sorcerer. Tolkien did it. It rocked. Let's move on. Let's do something new.

Patrick Rothfuss

#41. Tolkien regretted "the degeneration of real curiosity and enthusiasm," and called for research motivated by love of knowledge rather than hunger for a job.

Philip Zaleski

#42. Elves have this superhuman strength, yet they're so graceful. Tolkien created them to be angelic spirits, but I also saw Legolas as something out of the Seven Samurai.

Orlando Bloom

#43. For Tolkien, a myth awakens in its readers a longing for something that lies beyond their grasp. Myths

Alister E. McGrath

#44. There's lots of Tolkien that must be confusing to people.

Ian McKellen

#45. The whole atmosphere of the book, the tone of 'The Hobbit,' is of a kid's adventure story, told in the first person by Tolkien, who is introducing young people to the notion of Middle-earth. A lot of it is very light-hearted.

Ian McKellen

#46. Not all Tolkien haters are Orcs, but all Orcs are Tolkien haters.

Peter Kreeft

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

George R R Martin

#48. Though he found himself reluctant to be the direct cause of any actual killing. This wasn't Tolkien - these weren't orcs and trolls and giant spiders and whatever else, evil creatures that you were free to commit genocide on without any complicated moral ramifications.

Lev Grossman

#49. 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

#50. 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.

Philip Pullman

#51. Tolkien seems to me reactionary, conservative, fearful of a modern world. Fearful of anything that isn't sanctioned by the passage of long eons of time. I think what I'm doing in His Dark Materials is politically the reverse of that.

Philip Pullman

#52. Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back. Screw Gandalf. He had a great death and the characters should have had to go on without him.

George R R Martin

#53. Because, I thought, a line from Tolkien materializing in my head, one does not simply walk into Mordor.

Ransom Riggs

#54. J.R.R. Tolkien told a questioning correspondent, life's purpose is to know, praise, and thank God.

Philip Zaleski

#55. a line from Tolkien materializing in my head, one does not simply walk into Mordor. We

Ransom Riggs

#56. It's crazy to me how concerned people get with what it looks like and what you can do there. People may as well be talking about JRR Tolkien or Star Trek or something.

Brad Warner

#57. Christianity brings to fulfilment and completion imperfect and partial insights about reality, scattered abroad in human culture. Tolkien gave Lewis a lens, a way of seeing things, which

Alister E. McGrath

#58. For Tolkien, a myth is a story that conveys "fundamental things" - in other words, that tries to tell us about the deeper structure of things. The best myths, he argues, are not deliberately constructed falsehoods, but are rather tales woven by people to capture the echoes of deeper truths. Myths

Alister E. McGrath

#59. More often than not, however, the person who flatly states 'Elves aren't like that!' is hard pressed to describe how they really look ... as if Tolkien has summoned archetypes from so deep in our minds that we can only recall them incompletely.

John Howe

#60. I have been illustrating Tolkien's books ever since I first read them, long before illustration became my profession.

John Howe

#61. The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything.

Jo Walton

#62. I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.

Peter Jackson

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. 'The Hobbit' by J. R. R. Tolkien was the first book I enjoyed. I was 14 and when I finished I started it again.

Nigel Lythgoe

#66. To put the last point another way, writers such as Graves, Sassoon, and Owen saw the Great War as the disease, but Tolkien saw it as merely the symptom.

John Garth

#67. I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.

A.S. Byatt

#68. I've always looked upon the Ducks as caricature human beings. Perhaps I've been years writing in that middle world that J.R.R. Tolkien describes, and never knew it.

Carl Barks

#69. I would love to live in 'The Lord of the Rings.' J. R. R. Tolkien's world is so vivid and rich and sensual. I love the country setting and the routine of the hobbits. Of course, I would like to be a hobbit who goes on small adventures - not huge, horrifying ones like Frodo's quest.

Mary Pope Osborne

#70. Tolkienist (n.) Someone who studies the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Leslie Simon

#71. J.R.R. Tolkien, said a student, "could turn a lecture room into a mead hall in which he was the bard and we were the feasting, listening guests.

Philip Zaleski

#72. Just think about it: in every shop in the reading world since 1956, there has been two feet of book-space devoted to Tolkien.

John Rhys-Davies

#73. Dagorath was a word in Sindarin, the Elvish language J. R. R. Tolkien had created for The Lord of the Rings.

Ernest Cline

#74. 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

#75. We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe
All the evening, from his empty mug
With gleaming eye glanced towards us:
"I seen 'em myself!" he said fiercely.

C.S. Lewis

#76. And therefore a giant hammer of pure stupidity lashed out of the screen and felled me again. I lay mewling, clutching my head with my sweaty hands, whimpering for my Mommy to make it stop. MAKE IT STOP!
But it did not stop. It. Did. Not. Stop.
The Desolation of Tolkien

John C. Wright

#77. 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

J.R.R. Tolkien

#78. 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

#79. Tolkien made dwarf sign language because, you know, it's too loud to talk in the mines.

Richard C. Armitage

#80. In my story I do not deal in Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is Zero. - The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, no. 183

John C. Wright

#81. All fairy tales, Tolkien argued, echo the gospel of Jesus Christ in some way because the gospel is the True Story; it's the real fairy tale that crashed into the time line of history... 'The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact,' Lewis wrote

Sarah Arthur

#82. The man once wrote: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Tolkien had that one mostly right.
I stepped forward, let the door bang closed, and snarled, Fuck subtle.

Jim Butcher

#83. Beginning with Bilbo's unexpected party in chapter 1 with its tea, seed-cakes, buttered scones, apple-tarts, mince-pies, cheese, eggs, cold chicken, pickles, beer, coffee, and smoke rings, we find that a reverence, celebration, and love of the everyday is an essential part of Tolkien's moral vision

Devin Brown

#84. I was a massive Tolkien fan. 'The Hobbit' was ... my favorite book as a little girl, and the Silvan Elves were my favorite characters in the book.

Evangeline Lilly

#85. my experience, people who are very keen on The Lord of the Rings can be a bit odd. On the other hand, I was quite a Tolkien fan myself.

Sharon Bolton

#86. Language construction will BREED a mythology. J.R.R. Tolkien

Philip Zaleski

#87. His poem is like a play in a room through the windows of which a distant view can be seen over a large part of the English traditions about the world of their original home. (Tolkien on the author of Beowulf)

J.R.R. Tolkien

#88. 'The Lord of the Rings,' published in the mid-1950s, was intended as a prehistory to our own world. It was perceived by Tolkien to be a small but significant episode in a vast alternate mythology constructed entirely out of his own imagination.

Peter Jackson

#89. I quote Tolkien because he puts it better. But I can still open a can of whup ass all over you."
You're right," I told him. "He does put it better.

Karen Chance

#90. Tolkien helped Lewis to realise that the problem lay not in Lewis's rational failure to understand the theory, but in his imaginative failure to grasp its significance. The issue was not primarily about truth, but about meaning. When

Alister E. McGrath

#91. There's a very strong force in Tolkien's characters.

Richard C. Armitage

#92. Peter Jackson has just really earned the right to be Tolkien's torchbearer on screen.

Evangeline Lilly

#93. There aren't many funny bits in Mr Tolkien either,' Matilda said.
'Do you think that all children's books ought to have funny bits in them?' Miss Honey asked.
'I do,' Matilda said. 'Children are not so serious as grown-ups and love to laugh.

Roald Dahl

#94. But Tolkien doesn't ask the question: What was Aragorn's tax policy?

George R R Martin

#95. When you succeed at creating your own world, whether it's in any realm - like Tolkien was able to do - and people are able to enter that world, it's a special thing.

David Selby

#96. Authors as diverse as Rudyard Kipling, E. Nesbit, and J. R. R. Tolkien have shaped modern paganism as greatly as any theological underpinnings.

Liz Williams

#97. 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

#98. I fell even more deeply in love with Tolkien's legendarium after studying Old English literature at uni, as I got a sense of the historical events and cultures that Tolkien used to create his world. My favourite of his imaginary locations is Lothlorien.

Samantha Shannon

#99. I'm the first to admit that I can't be as good as Tolkien, and a movie can never be as good as Tolkien.

Ralph Bakshi

#100. 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