Catherine

“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.”
― JRR Tolkien

“As the story grew, it put down roots into the past and threw out unexpected branches .”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“If they won’t write the kind of books we like to read, we shall have to write them ourselves.”
― C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien

“Words should not be used merely because they are 'old' or obsolete. The words chosen, however remote they may be from colloquial speech or ephemeral suggestions, must be words that remain in literary use, especially in the use of verse, among educated people. (To such Beowulf was addressed, into whatever hands it may since have fallen.) They must need no gloss. The fact that a word was still used by Chaucer, or by Shakespeare, or even later, gives it no claim, if it has in our time perished from literary use.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays