“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

“What shall we do, what shall we do! Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves is like out of the frying pan and into the fire!”

“We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.”

“Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves!” he said, and it became a proverb, though we now say ‘out of the frying-pan into the fire’ in the same sort of uncomfortable situations.”

“It matters little who is the enemy, if we cannot beat off his attack.”

“Man, Sub-creator, the refracted lightthrough whom is splintered from a single Whiteto many hues, and endlessly combinedin living shapes that move from mind to mind.Though all the crannies of the world we filledwith Elves and Goblins, though we dared to buildGods and their houses out of dark and light,and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right(used or misused). The right has not decayed.We make still by the law in which we're made.”