I don't believe in elitism. I don't think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience.- Quentin Tarantino
Literary Birthday - 3 January
Happy Birthday, JRR Tolkien, born 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973
JRR Tolkien: 10 Quotes
- I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and beautiful at whatever cost of peril.
- It’s the job that’s never started takes longest to finish.
- I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.
- I learned more in those two years than in any other equal period of my life. (On his time spent working on the New English Dictionary)
- Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.
- I am told that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it.
- The unpayable debt that I owe to him [C.S. Lewis] was not ‘influence’ as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby.
- If you’re going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise you’ll never make a map of it afterwards.
- The news today about ‘Atomic bombs’ is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men’s hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope ‘this will ensure peace’. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we’re in God’s hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.
- A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in South Africa but moved to England as a child. He was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known for the classic high fantasy works: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
by Amanda Patterson
From Writers Write
“If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together.. there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart.. I’ll always be with you.”
It is not length of life, but depth of life. … A great integrity makes us immortal; an admiration, a deep love, a strong will, arms us above fear. It makes a day memorable. We say we lived years in that hour.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Immortality”
“Anne and her family lived alone on an island. She enjoyed having tea time with her friends the spiny lobster and baby hawk.”
- National Geographic, August 1938
General: Männer, es war ein langer Krieg, es war ein harter Krieg.
Liebgott: Men, it’s been a long war, it’s been a tough war.
General: Ihr habt tapfer und stolz für Euer Vaterland gekämpft.
Liebgott: You’ve fought bravely, proudly for your country.
General: Ihr seid eine spezielle Gruppe, die ineinander einen Zusammenhalt gefunden habt, wie er nur im Kampf existiert.
Liebgott: You are a special group, who have found in one another a bond that exists only in combat —
General: …unter Brüdern, die Fuchshöhlen geteilt haben, die sich in schrechklichen Momenten gegenseitig gehalten, die den Tod zusammen gesehen und miteinander gelitten haben.
Liebgott: …among brothers who have shared foxholes, who have held each other in dire moments, who have seen death, and suffered together.
General: Ich bin stolz mit Euch gedient zu haben.
Liebgott: I am proud to have served with you.
General: Sie verdienen ein glückliches und langes Leben.
Liebgott: You deserve long and happy lives of peace.
“You have to encourage people not to give in to the temptation to be normal, even if it isn’t easy.” - Clémence Poésy
We don’t write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.
“I don’t quite know what an auteur is. I’ve never quite understood that term, because filmmaking is such a huge team effort, you - I mean, I regard myself as being sort of the final filter, so everything that ends up in the movie is there, because it’s something that I’d think was cool if I saw the film that somebody else had made. I’m very much trying to make the film that I’ve enjoyed, but I’m open to ideas, I need a huge team of people to help me, everybody contributes and I try to encourage people to contribute as much as possible. I think that’s the job of a director really, is to sort of funnel all the creative into one centralized point of view. And the marketing is sort of something that really happens with other people, it’s not something that I’m at all an expert in, and I regard my job at the end of the day as to make the best possible film I can, and that’s really where my job stops and marketing people take over after that.” - Peter Jackson
