This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
And as the captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.
J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
For so sworn good or evil an oath may not be broken and it shall pursue oathkeeper and oathbreaker to the world's end.