“What if I can't get out?
I want to.
I'm just so tired
of being picked apart
and scattered like
ashes.
I see now
that my
demons
are
scavengers.
But the darkness
is an old
friend I can't say no to.”
Source: Melancholy Dreams: Surviving the Battle of Depression - Poems
“It's easier now.
There's a sense of relief.
And while I still suffer from my demons,
I am not overcome by them.
I am not chained by them.
I just know how to deal with them.
And that is the greatest satisfaction.”
Source: Melancholy Dreams: Surviving the Battle of Depression - Poems
“I've never
smiled so hard
in my life,
until the day
I found
myself again.
I'm
at
peace.
The
peace
I
never
knew
I
already
had.
It took
a lot of strength.
Strength
I underestimated
having.”
Source: Melancholy Dreams: Surviving the Battle of Depression - Poems
“Writing saved me from despair, a vent for the hot steam of sadness and fury.”
“The sum of a man isn't the things he's done, it is the world he leaves behind.”
Source: Dreams and Shadows
“The Shire at this time had hardly any ‘government’. Families for the most part managed their own affairs. Growing food and eating it occupied most of their time. In other matters they were, as a rule, generous and not greedy, but contented and moderate, so that estates, farms, workshops, and small trades tended to remain unchanged for
generations.”
Source: The Lord of the Rings
“Thus began the Shire-reckoning, for the year of the crossing of the Brandywine (as the Hobbits turned the name) became Year One of the Shire, and all later dates were reckoned from it.* At once the western Hobbits fell in love with their new land, and they remained there, and soon passed once more out of the history of Men and of Elves. While there was still a king they were in name his subjects, but they were, in fact, ruled by their own chieftains and meddled not at all with events in the world outside. To the last battle at Fornost with the Witch-lord of Angmar they sent some bowmen to the aid of the king, or so they maintained, though no tales of Men
record it. But in that war the North Kingdom ended; and then the Hobbits took the land for their own, and they chose from their own chiefs a Thain to hold the authority of the
king that was gone. There for a thousand years they were little troubled by wars, and they prospered and multiplied after the Dark Plague (S.R. 37) until the disaster of the Long
Winter and the famine that followed it. Many thousands then perished, but the Days of Dearth (1158–60) were at the time
of this tale long past and the Hobbits had again become accustomed to plenty. The land was rich and kindly, and though it had long been deserted when they entered it, it had
before been well tilled, and there the king had once had many farms, cornlands, vineyards, and woods.”
Source: The Lord of the Rings
“There remained, of course, the ancient tradition concerning the high king at Fornost, or Norbury as they called it, away north of the Shire. But there had been no king for nearly a thousand years, and even the ruins of Kings’ Norbury were covered with grass. Yet the Hobbits still said of wild folk and
wicked things (such as trolls) that they had not heard of the king. For they attributed to the king of old all their essential laws; and usually they kept the laws of free will, because they were The Rules (as they said), both ancient and just.”
Source: The Lord of the Rings
“The only real official in the Shire at this date was the Mayor of Michel Delving (or of the Shire), who was elected every seven years at the Free Fair on the White Downs at the Lithe, that is at Midsummer. As mayor almost his only duty was to preside at banquets, given on the Shire-holidays, which occurred at frequent intervals. But the offices of Postmaster and First Shirriff were attached to the mayoralty, so that he managed both the Messenger Service and the Watch. These
were the only Shire-services, and the Messengers were the most numerous, and much the busier of the two. By no means all Hobbits were lettered, but those who were wrote constantly to all their friends (and a selection of their relations) who lived further off than an afternoon’s walk.
The Shirriffs was the name that the Hobbits gave to their police, or the nearest equivalent that they possessed. They had, of course, no uniforms (such things being quite unknown), only a feather in their caps; and they were in practice rather haywards than policemen, more concerned with the strayings of beasts than of people. There were in all the Shire
only twelve of them, three in each Farthing, for Inside Work. A rather larger body, varying at need, was employed to ‘beat the bounds’, and to see that Outsiders of any kind, great or small, did not make themselves a nuisance.”
Source: The Lord of the Rings
“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending.”
Source: 1975 Hobbit: There and Back Again by JRR Tolkien, Third Edition, Dust Jacket, Science Fiction Decor, Lord of the Rings