Garth Risk Hallberg Quotes

'The Hobbit' was one of the first biggish books I ever read. I remember vividly the 'riddles in the dark' passage, and it meant a lot to me to finally get to play it after all these years.

If I'm made to pick one transcendent reading experience, then it was listening to Miss Sarzin as - if we'd been very, very good - she read the next chapter of 'The Hobbit' aloud to us.

I read Tolkien when I was 11. I read 'The Hobbit' and the trilogy on a road trip with my family. I identified with the nonhumans in those books, and it never occurred to me why that was.

The success that the Tolkien books had redefined modern fantasy.

I can remember watching 'Lord of the Rings' and being truly regretful that I wasn't a being in that world.

I read 'The Hobbit' while at school. It was OK; can't really remember too much from there, other than the fact I was 10! I never read it again until the script for the film, but it has to be an amazing story when you know Sir Peter Jackson has made three films out of it.

Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.

The 'Chronicles of Narnia' have been favourites of mine since my childhood when I misread 'Aslan' as 'Alsatian' and was struck by the genius of naming a lion after a dog!

I read a lot of fantasy and grew up on 'Star Wars' and 'Star Trek.' I loved going to Middle Earth. 'Dungeons & Dragons' was a huge influence.

My favorite group growing up was 'The Hobbit.' It was the first book I actually finished. One of those adventure things that takes you to that land and it will forever hold a special place in my heart. I am not a huge book reader.

I love, love, love fantasy, like 'Lord of the Rings' and things like that.

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.

The best fantasy does not offer an answer to our lives, it is an offering that acknowledges enough of the truth to resonate and add to the understanding about the human condition.

Ultimately, Lloyd Alexander's tales of Prydain were enough to make me come back and visit again and again, and each time, I laughed and I wept. Each time. No exceptions.

I was a huge bookworm as a kid, and you could usually find me reading something with a dragon on its cover.

As a kid, I loved any fantasy.

'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.

Fantasy was something I'd read as a child. And, in fact, my teachers despaired a little bit because I refused to give up Enid Blyton. Then I walked through the wardrobe with C. S. Lewis, and I don't think I actually have returned fully from the wardrobe. So, fantasy was something that was in my life from quite young.

I loved fantasy, but I particularly loved the stories in which somebody got out of where they were and into somewhere better - as in the 'Chronicles Of Narnia,' 'The Wizard Of Oz,' 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' the 'Dungeons & Dragons' cartoon on Saturday morning in the '80s.

Tolkien didn't just write 'The Hobbit,' he created a whole world.

I loved 'Pan's Labyrinth.' It transported me into another world. I like fantasy worlds; I love 'Lord of the Rings' as well, for that reason, because you really get to get out of reality and go somewhere else.

I'll never forget anything about Middle Earth. That's part of my memory now so I won't miss anything.

I believe that hunger for a 'lost dimension' of experience is a natural yearning in all of us, and it doesn't go away just because we ignore it. It is evidenced among other places in the millions of children and adults who obsessively read the 'Harry Potter' books. It is said that fiction is where someone gets to tell the truth.

I really respect and admire Tolkien. I think he was the most honest of the Romantics.

Fantasy is a demanding genre.