J. R. R. Tolkien on C. S. Lewis

“So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age—like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.”

“As C. S. Lewis said to me long ago, more or less – (I do not suppose my memory of his dicta is any more precisely accurate than his of mine: I often find strange things attributed to me in his works) – 'if they won’t write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves; but it is very laborious'.”

“The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not "influence" as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my "stuff" could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.”