Anna Katzmire

“Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained ‘righteous’, but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for ‘good’, and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great).

[The draft ends here. In the margin Tolkien wrote: ‘Thus while Sauron multiplied [illegible word] evil, he left “good” clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil.’]

Letter 246
From a letter to Mrs Eileen Elgar (drafts)”
― Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“A LETTER FROM ROMANIA

Do you see me?

Squinting beneath the half-light,
Searching for a key to
The locked door of the world,
Lost within my own shadow
Amidst an empire of fear.

Do you feel me?

Heating a brick
To warm my sleep.
Drifting into dreams,
In search of myself,
In search of a conscience, a country.

Do you hear me?

Reciting jokes
Laughing to hide tears of truth
That we are denied the present
With empty promises
Of an emptier future.

Do you pity me?

Lips that know no taste of fruit,
Lonely in a country of millions,
Stumbling toward the gallows
Of bad decisions
While the walls listen and laugh.

Will you remember me?

A boy with wings of hope
Strapped to his back
That never had a chance to open,
Denied forever knowing
What he could have become.

What we all could have become.”
― Ruta Sepetys, I Must Betray You

“It has long been held that both treasure and the Eternity Gate survived together, or nothing did at all.”
― Katherine Briggs, The Eternity Gate

“If only I could have been a fairytale queen, in a beautiful palace, with nothing to do but dance and be beautiful.

Now I am a queen of darkness and terror.”
― Jessica Day George, Silver in the Blood