Treebeard Reads

“I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothloriene no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horselords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fanghorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystefied as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22.

J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955”
― Tolkien

“Obsessed with the desire to be happy I lost my life. I moved with the tension of a bow and arrow in an unreality of desires.”
― Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life

“He wanted to fuck her loudly on a hard bed with rain beating on the windows.”
― Don DeLillo, Mao II

“Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.”
― Don DeLillo, Conversations with Don Delillo