Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com

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[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

Stephen Colbert is going to write a movie about the six missing chapters from Jackon's The Fellowship of the Ring film. Really.

Colbert is admittedly a huge Tolkien fan, and he knows his lore. But the well for stories is so much deeper than just filling in the gaps from Jackson's films--with this and the hunt for Gollum we're just getting footnote films. Nothing new, just more info.

My bet is this will be a flashback of the Hobbit's telling their kids this story. I'm skeptical.

[Warner Bros. @warnerbros]

In honor of Tolkien Reading Day and the destruction of the One Ring, we bring you a special announcement.

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"I am a philologist, and all my work is philological. I avoid hobbies because I am a very serious person, and cannot distinguish between private amusement and duty. I am affable, but unsociable." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, June 1955

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"My work did not 'evolve' into a serious work. It started like that. The so-called 'children's story' [The Hobbit] was torn out of an existing mythology. In so far as it was dressed up 'for children', in style or manner, I regret it. So do the children." ~ Tolkien, June

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"I don't tick. I am not a machine. (If I did tick, I should have no views on it, and you had better ask the winder.)" ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, in response to The New York Times Book Review, asking him, "What...makes you tick?", June 1955

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"I only work for private amusement, since I find my duties privately amusing." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, June 1955

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"In no circumstances will I agree to being photographed for [an article]. I regard all such intrusions as impertinence. The irritation it causes spreads its influence over a greater time than the intrusion occupies. My work needs concentration & peace of mind." ~ Tolkien, 1967

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"I have so far seen 2 reviews of 'Tom Bombadil': I expected remarks far more snooty & patronizing. I was pleased, since it seemed that the reviewers had started out not wanting to be amused, but had failed to maintain their Victorian dignity intact." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, Nov 19

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"For if there is anything in a journey of any length, for me it is this: a deliverance from the plantlike state of helpless passive sufferer, an exercise however small of will, & mobility--and of curiosity, without which a rational mind becomes stultified." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, 19

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"Well here comes Christmas! That astonishing thing that no 'commercialism' can in fact defile--unless you let it." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to his son Michael, December 1962

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

@jwsherrod Was hoping you’d notice 😀

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"I had great difficulty to get my story published! It remains an unfailing delight to me to find my own belief justified: that the 'fairy-story' is really an adult genre, & one for which a starving audience exists." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, March 1955

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"The Inklings had no recorder and C.S. Lewis no Boswell. The name was not invented by C.S.L. (nor by me). In origin it was an undergraduate jest, devised as the name of a literary (or writers') club." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, September 1967

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"We have prayed endlessly for Christian re-union, but it is difficult to see, if one reflects, how that could possibly begin to come about except as it has, with all its inevitable minor absurdities." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, Oct 1968

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"I have had time to glance at the [Houghton Mifflin] 'jacket' stuff. This account must have been written by someone who has not read the book, but relied on hearsay inaccurately remembered. At least the plot given away might be that of the book described." ~ JRR Tolkien, Dec

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"Council is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill." ~ Gildor Inglorion in The Fellowship of the Ring

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"But life is not easy. The Parke has gone sick. Mummy is ailing, and I fear slowly 'declining'. Also I feel very cut off..." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien in a letter to Michael Tolkien - July 31, 1969

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"[The details of the lives of authors and artists] only distract attention from an author's works (if the works are in fact worthy of attention), and end, as one now often sees, in becoming the main interest." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, Oct 1958

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"I do not like giving 'facts' about myself other than 'dry' ones (which are quite as relevant to my books as any other more juicy details). I object to the trend in criticism, with its excessive interest in the details of the lives of authors & artists." ~J.R.R. Tolkien, Oc

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"What a dreadful, fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in--especially for those who have also the burden of age, whose friends and all they especially care for are afflicted in the same way." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, November 1969

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"I don't think Tom [Bombadil] needs philosophizing about, & is not improved by it. I put him in because I had already 'invented' him independently & wanted an 'adventure' on the way. But I kept him in because he represents things otherwise left out." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, Sep

[Jonathan | ExploringTolkien.com @torc]

"I have just received a copy of C.S.L.'s latest: Studies in Words. Alas! His ponderous silliness is becoming a fixed manner. I am deeply relieved to find I am not mentioned." ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, September 1960