J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

Little islands are all large prisons: one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.

I went to Paris, I went to France, I went to England, I went to Ireland. In my mind, I can go wherever I wanted to go. I left death row every day.

I'm like a caged animal sometimes. Let me yearn to breathe free.

You can not escape a prison if you do not know you're in one.

Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket. . . . Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace.

We're all in prison. All of us are in prison, but some of us have a key.

as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

The world like our heads was meant to be escaped from, they are prisons world and head alike.

Art allows people a way to dream their way out of their struggle.

Oh, bird of my soul, fly away now, For I possess a hundred fortified towers.

Creativity can release you from the limitations that the world has constructed around you; the everyday, mundane, 9-5 jail cell where everybody is waiting for the weekend to party so they can get outside of their head.

Music is supposed to be an escape. It's supposed to be somewhere you go, where you can be yourself, or be whatever you want to be.

I escaped one time. In 1971 I was in the free world for six weeks.

So I departed and was free from imprisonment.

Having been let out of the barn once, I know I wouldn't be happy if I were home all the time.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

I needed to run away in order to come home.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

There is not a man among them who would not leave if they believed they could make their escape … Liberty is sweet.

As you enter the world of myth, you have immediately a wonderful freedom.

I circumnavigated the globe while I was sitting in a prison. It was wonderful because I kept defeating those walls they put around me.

Every work of art is a great promise of escape and, therefore, like an open invitation.

A ship in dock, surrounded by quays and the walls of warehouses, has the appearance of a prisoner meditating upon freedom in the sadness of a free spirit put under restraint.

There are children who will leave a game to go and be bored in a corner of the garret. How often have I wished for the attic of my boredom when the complications of life made me lose the very germ of freedom!