The grey-rain curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

No one, I fancy, would discredit a story that the Archbishop of Canterbury slipped on a banana skin merely because he found that a similar comic mishap had been reported of many people, and especially of elderly gentlemen of dignity.

All stories are ultimately about the fall.

What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!'Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.

I pity snails, and all that carry their homes on their backs.

If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards.