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Quote by J.R.R. Tolkien

“It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that "legends" depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the "legends" which it conveys by tradition. (For example, that the Greek mythology depends far more on the marvellous aesthetic of its language and so of its nomenclature of persons and places and less on its content than people realize, though of course it depends on both. And vice versa. Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &C. are dead, for deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.). (letter 180)”

Quote by J.R.R. Tolkien

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The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

This book includes letters written by J.R.R. Tolkien, covering a wide range of topics including his writing process, personal life, and thoughts on various subjects. more

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J.R.R. Tolkien

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“Do you want to learn Tagalog?” I asked, surprised. I had had no idea Shla had an interest in foreign languages. “I just… people try to speak to me in Tagalog, sometimes.” “Oh,” was all I managed. Outside the church my mum and I had frequented, the only other language people had tried to speak to me was Slow English. “Yeah, I just… I don’t know. I had to choose a language and it was a reason, and then it seemed useful for the competitions… Like, half the word that doesn’t speak English speaks Spanish. But…” She swallowed, glancing up. “I don’t want it. It’s not what I want and I… I’m a little angry, because the only reason Tagalog is anything like Spanish in the first place is that Spanish people decided to take over. And then, I don’t know, the English did too, and I’m English, right? But…” She gestured at herself. “I’m not.” “You are,” I promised her. “And you are not,” I added. It was equally true and in this, at least, I knew just what she felt. By leaving my country I had damned myself to never being home again, eternally in exile, even if I were to return to Ethiopia I would never just be Ethiopian. Shla had never left, but being adopted had left her with a feeling of loss, like she had lost the thread of her own existence, her own history. In the end, she was standing at the border, unable to declare her loyalty to any one country, or, it seemed, any one language. “But now you can’t drop it, you need to get your GSCEs.”

“People usually associate the colour pink with weakness and naiveté; but I associate this colour with the most beautiful parts of the day— dawn and dusk! And in my searching through mystical writings, I have found that pink is actually related to the utmost levels of the Tree of Life. I've also seen it in pictures of the sky surrounding the most magnificent Aurora Borealis! So pink is strong and wonderful.”

“To make sense of plastic on the mind and to develop a resistance to the perverse patterns that will otherwise run our world for us, I believe an activity of this sort - by way of a blog, an especially redemptive conversation with a coworker, a water coloring or a playlist - is absolutely crucial. It can be done. And when we do it, we begin to see things we didn't know. We have to try to make sense. We have to make time for artful analysis, which is the way we clear a space for the possibility of sanity. It is an outlet for honesty.”