English - Novelist | January 3, 1892 - September 2, 1973
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
J. R. R. Tolkien
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I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.
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If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it's my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.
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I don't like allegories.
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A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.
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I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them.
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'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
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Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
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They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited 'first chapters'. I have indeed written many.
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Middle English is an exciting field - almost uncharted, I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention on to any little corner of it, the received notions and ideas seem to crumple up and fall to pieces - as far as language goes, at any rate.
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I never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me.
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In October 1920 I went to Leeds as Reader in English Language, with a free commission to develop the linguistic side of a large and growing School of English Studies, in which no regular provision had as yet been made for the linguistic specialist.
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