J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground. A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stone, Forgotten in the western wolds.

I loved the Little Lulu stories, where she would fantasize that her bedroom rug would turn into a pool of water, and she could dive down into the center of the world.

I loved living in Hollywood - and the weather there was just fantastic - but there is something about rural England, and especially Suffolk and Norfolk, that pulls at my heartstrings.

While Pickstown may not be what it once was, it still is framed by the natural beauty of the ancient river, the sweep of the Great Plains, and the long, unbroken shoreline of the lake behind the dam. It gave me a 19th-century childhood in a modern mid-20th-century town, and for that I will always be grateful.

I love to see a wood full of bluebells. Growing up in the Kent countryside, I have special memories of this brief annual spectacle.

When I picture England, I picture little gardens and beautiful yards. I don't really like cities; I like to go and see things like that.

As a little girl living in the English countryside, I used to go running around in the forests, creating my own fairy tale.

One place that I looked at a lot from space and which looks alluring is New Zealand, especially the North Island. It's a big broad valley with a river flowing through it, and you can see the wine-making dryness of the land.

I knew that my dollhouse was a toy, but in a way, it seemed more like a portal to adulthood. I didn't play with it the way I might with my Barbie dream house. Instead, I furnished it. I kept it pristine. I decorated the house for each season. I had jack-o'-lanterns in the fall and a Christmas tree with working lights in the winter.

I think I wanted to be a storyteller because I had a very active dream life. My life was boring, and I dreamed about a life bigger than my own. I've always just been that person, from my earliest memories at age 2.

Think, for a moment, of the countless happy childhood hours you spent with this amazing device: Drawing perfect horizontals, drawing perfect verticals, drawing really spastic diagonals, trying to scrape away the silver powder from the window so you could look inside.

I believe in beauty. I believe in stones and water, air and soil, people and their future and their fate.

When I see birches bend to left and right... I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

Oh, that river of wishes, the slippery crocodile dream of it, how it might have carried my body down through all the glittering sand bars to the sea.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~ And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.

The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end.

. . . perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters . . . glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.

I create books for six-year-olds. I don't know why that time of my life was so important to me, but no matter what I draw, it always looks like it comes from a children's book. I can't resist. I'll set out to paint a serious picture then think, "Well, maybe there would be a little bunny in that corner."

It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.

As a child I did a lot of imaginary bits, you know. It depends on the individual, I enjoyed then knocking the nail in, I enjoy knocking nails in walls to hang pictures up, but I also enjoy thinking 'I'm gonna do that' but I actually won't do it, I enjoy imagining doing things just as much.

When I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night's sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill on the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man.

Dreaming by the river, I dedicated my imagination to water, to clear, green water, the water that makes the meadows green.

[Fairy tales] make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.

I thought how lovely and how strange a river is.