Harry Lee Poe > Quotes

“Storytelling explores the problem with people. Stories without conflict are bad stories that no one repeats. Conflict describes the reality of human life and interaction with others. The resolution of the conflict in which everyone lives happily ever after reflects the human yearning for hope.”
― Harry Lee Poe, The Inklings of Oxford: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their Friends

“be the most special place because of the friends who made that place special. At an important time in life when people were changing from children into grownups, a few people shared in the amazing transformation. While the places where we live and work do not define us or determine who and what we will become, they do form the context in which we flourish, wither, or merely subsist. The places of our lives either nourish us or drain us. Places do not make us, but they provide the physical space in which we relate to the people who play such an important role, for good or ill, in shaping who we become. The special place of this book is the university and city of Oxford. The special people are a group of friends who lived there and called themselves the Inklings.”
― Harry Lee Poe, The Inklings of Oxford: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Their Friends

“Shortly after finding Phantastes, Jack ordered a copy of British Ballads in the Everyman edition with a chocolate binding, a style of book binding that Arthur liked but Jack formerly did not. He joked to Arthur about being converted to all of Arthur’s views and then, adding to the joke, suggested that Arthur might even make a Christian of him.107 Jack’s jokes had a way of being prophetic. The extent to which his lust for beautiful editions of books had gotten the better of him is evident from an episode shortly after he had promised himself to read one of William Morris’s translations of the Icelandic sagas as soon as he finished The Faerie Queene. He found the very book he wanted in the cheap Walter Scott Library edition, but decided not to buy it because the edition simply was not pretty enough.”
― Harry Lee Poe, Becoming C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Young Jack Lewis