“ The light obtained by setting straw men on fire is not what we mean by illumination. ”
This is surely the most significant of the elements that Tolkien brought to fantasy.... his arranged marriage between the Elder Edda and The Wind in the Willows--big Icelandic romance and small-scale, cozy English children's book. The story told by The Lord of the Rings is essentially what would happen if Mole and Ratty got drafted into the Nibelungenlied.
~ Adam Gopnik
Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they're arguing.
The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.
Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist.
