Tolkien Quotes

‘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.

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.

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

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.

There’s a very strong force in Tolkien’s characters.

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

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.

There’s lots of Tolkien that must be confusing to people.

‘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.

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.

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?’

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.

Tolkien was influenced by South Africa when he was writing ‘Lord of the Rings.’ It’s really epic scenery.

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.

I didn’t want to write a pure fantasy novel, though I love those and grew up on J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula LeGuin.

Tolkien is eminently filmable, I think. ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is intensely… landscaped. But ‘Discworld’ is about dialogue, which is one reason why it might be hard to film.

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

The Seventies were an interesting time to be a reader or writer of fantasy. Tolkien was the great master. Lin Carter was resurrecting wonders of British and American fantasy from the early twentieth century in his Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series.

Tolkien was, I believe, writing about his experience in the First and Second World Wars, where he would have spent a lot of time without any female contact. He was part of the fellowship of men who went to war, and I think, really, that’s what he’s writing about.

The Beatles once approached Stanley Kubrick to do ‘The Lord Of The Rings.’ This was before Tolkien sold the rights. They approached him, and he said, ‘No.’

My wife and I have this discussion all the time. Her primal influences are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald. Mine are Rudyard Kipling, Edith Nesbit and T.H. White. So, we have certain structural differences in form and content right off the bat!

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.

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.

When Peter Jackson made the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies, I remember there was a concern that people who didn’t read Tolkien wouldn’t go see the first one. But the films were so good in their own right that the audience grew beyond the readership of the book.

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.

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.

This might disappoint you somewhat, but I have to say my interest in Tolkien has faded dramatically over the years. His language skills are amazing, his story good and fascinating, but… he has a very Judeo-Christian perspective, and his use of mythical creatures is very… ignorant.

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.

Fantasy films tend to skew towards what Tolkien fantasy was, which is that the humans, the Hobbits, and the cute creatures are the good guys, and everything that’s ugly are the bad guys.

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.