The Shire Quotes & Sayings

The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it. If we just start there, every beautiful thing that has and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the world. — Warsan Shire

I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don't feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Dillon went so still it was like Hunter was alone in the apartment again. He emitted no breath, no whisper of movement, nothing. He was just a blank space, an absence in the middle of the room. Hunter started to reach for him but froze his hand when Dillon spoke. ( ... ) — Brandon Shire

We took such care of tomorrow, but died on the way there. — Warsan Shire

I think most kids have a place they go to when they're scared or lonely or just plain bored. They call it NeverLand or The Shire, Boo'ya Moon if they've got big imaginations and make it up for themselves. Most of them forget. The talented few - like Scott - harness their dreams and turn them into horses. — Stephen King

You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?

What man wants to lie down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?

Your daughter 's face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things.

But God,
doesn't she wear
the world well? — Warsan Shire

Two people who were once very close can
without blame
or grand betrayal
become strangers.
perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world. — Warsan Shire

I picked up The Hobbit. And I began to read. I was swept off to a green, green Shire in a far, far land, and my soul has never returned. I suppose it never will. Yes, my soul at the time wandered more in the smoking wastelands of Mordor or the Dead Marshes than Hobbiton, but wandering in Middle Earth, was superior to my own world in every way. — Steve Bivans

They hammered on the outer gate and called, but there was at first no answer; and then to their surprise someone blew a horn, and the lights in the windows went out. A voice shouted in the dark: 'Who's that? Be off! You can't come in. Can't you read the notice: No admittance between sundown and sunrise?' 'Of course we can't read the notice in the dark,' Sam shouted back. 'And if hobbits of the Shire are to be kept out in the wet on a night like this, I'll tear down your notice when I find it. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Essentially, if our secrets are secrets because we are told to be ashamed, then we must share them. There is no shame in being sad or struggling or trying to heal. We are all desperate, depraved and sacred. We are all terrible and brillIant. I can list all the things that can make a girl want to escape her own body (re: patriarchy). But I'd rather list all the things that make me want to stay in my body, and adorn it like a home, rub oils into my skin, tell it how sorry I am for trying to leave, for trying to hurt it into submission — Warsan Shire

When Hobbits first began to smoke is not known, all the legends and family histories take it for granted; for ages folk in the Shire smoked various herbs, some fouler, some sweeter. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you're young and asleep. Look at all these borders foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate ... I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck; I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body. — Warsan Shire

By the time I've finished with you,
you won't know whether you've been kissed or cut,
whether you were loved or butchered.
and either way you probably won't care,
just grateful you came close enough to touch. — Warsan Shire

Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women, kitchen of love, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy. Sometimes, the men, they come with keys, and sometimes the men, they come with hammers. — Warsan Shire

We all, like Frodo, carry a Quest, a Task: our daily duties. They come to us, not from us. We are free only to accept or refuse our task- and, implicitly, our Taskmaster. None of us is a free creator or designer of his own life. "None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself" (Rom 14:7). Either God, or fate, or meaningless chance has laid upon each of us a Task, a Quest, which we would not have chosen for ourselves. We are all Hobbits who love our Shire, or security, our creature comforts, whether these are pipeweed, mushrooms, five meals a day, and local gossip, or Starbucks coffees, recreational sex, and politics. But something, some authority not named in The Lord of the Rings (but named in the Silmarillion), has decreed that a Quest should interrupt this delightful Epicurean garden and send us on an odyssey. We are plucked out of our Hobbit holes and plunked down onto a Road. — Peter Kreeft

I give myself five days to forget you.
on the first day i rust.
on the second i wilt.
on the third day i sit with friends but i think about your tongue.
i clean my room on the fourth day. i clean my body on the fourth day.
i try to replace your scent on the fourth day.
the fifth day, i adorn myself like the mouth of an inmate.
a wedding singer dressed in borrowed gold.
the midas of cheap metal.
tinsel in the middle of summer.
crevice glitter, two days after the party.
i glow the way unwanted things do,
a neon sign that reads;
come, i still taste like someone else's mouth. — Warsan Shire

Don't you dare," Lem barked.
"What?" Anderson pulled his hand to his chest. Not quite sure of the infraction he was about to commit.
"You were going to pick that flower."
Anderson smiled and reached for it again. "It's pretty."
Lem slapped his hand away. "It's endangered. Just look, don't pick."
"That's what they told me about you," Anderson said, bumping Lem with his shoulder. — Brandon Shire

Somewhere, my thirst for distraction from the pains and poverties of life grew into a sweltering, parching thing. There are always feelings to be numbed, anxieties to tamp down, and panic attacks to avoid. The people of the Shire knew this, and so do I. I suppose I could have turned to things eternal - didn't Jesus promise us rest? - but we seem to have a way of losing ourselves in our manmade salves - the bottle, the pill, the cheeseburger, self-inflicted starvation. I suppose we're all drunk on something. — Seth Haines

In my opinion, I think we have brief moments of great beauty and great pain, and as we journey we try to grasp one, so we can avoid the other. — Brandon Shire

Later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere. — Warsan Shire

Perhaps, the problem is not the intensity of your love, but the quality of the people you are loving. — Warsan Shire

Five thousand miles away and I can still feel your turbulence on my skin, Dustin; your grit stuck in the chambers of my heart ... and all the silence that has followed it.
Please write me back. — Brandon Shire

How far have you walked for men who've never held your feet in their laps?
how often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short?
why do you find the unavailable so alluring?
where did it begin? what went wrong? and who made you feel so worthless?
if they wanted you, wouldn't they have chosen you?
all this time, you were begging for love silently, thinking they couldn't hear you, but they smelt it on you, you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin?
and what about the others that would do anything for you, why did you make them love you until you could not stand it?
how are you both of these women, both flighty and needful?
where did you learn this, to want what does not want you?
where did you learn this, to leave those that want to stay? — Warsan Shire

At the end of the day, it isn't where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I'm going and never have been before. — Warsan Shire

Did you tell people that songs weren't the same as a warm body, a soft mouth? — Warsan Shire

Tesla," the vicar mused. "That's a foreign name, is it not? Hungarian,
is it?"
"Serbian," I corrected him. "I'm afraid the - shire Teslas are a
scant three centuries in these parts, having constructed Tesla Hall in
the reign of Queen Elizabeth.We are a restless people, and no doubt
will be moving on again any century now. — Vinnie Tesla

Make love like you have no secrets like you've never been left never been hurt like the world don't owe you a single wretched thing. — Warsan Shire

I could have lived off all the male careers in my family. Everybody was always getting ovations, but I was in the wings. — Talia Shire

No." He caught her back to him, spreading his fingers over her uninjured cheek. "Listen. When you were twelve years old I saw you for the first time. Truly saw you. And from then on, I took note whenever our paths crossed. You were so quiet it was difficult to believe you sprang from the same messy bloodlines as the rest of us. You had modesty and grace. You didn't flirt, and you didn't give quarter." His palm slipped from her face; he took up both her hands. "If the other maidens of the shire were garish bright stars, then you were the midnight around them, silent and mysterious and all the more interesting for it. I accepted you as that, mouse. I still do."

-Kit — Shana Abe

We'd all be lucky in life if we had the chance to experience an unexpected adventure, and then make our way back safely to a place of comfort. Sometimes the only way we can appreciate our home and the simple happiness it has to offer is to be away from it for a while. — Noble Smith

They spoke no more of the small news of
the Shire far away, nor of the dark shadows and perils that
encompassed them, but of the fair things they had seen in
the world together, of the Elves, of the stars, of trees, and the
gentle fall of the bright year in the woods. — J.R.R. Tolkien

It's time to step back and reexamine our hatred and let wrath subside. Are we striking out against the real problems: ignorance, fear, want, greed, and political disenfranchisement or just trying to find the most immediate scapegoat on which to lay the blame? Are we so busy blaming our fellow Hobbits that we've forgotten who is really behind the fouling of our Shire? Are we personally guilty of greed? Most of us are, to an extent. We need to reexamine our own desires, and make sure they are really needs instead of just wants. Poverty could be wiped out world wide, if enough modern Hobbits just said, "No! We will not stand for it anymore," or if those at the top of the economic ladder really wanted to do so. — Steve Bivans

All in all, Tolkien fans are as varied, remarkable and marvelous as the books and the worlds that they share. They make me feel a little like a Hobbit who glimpses colourful strangers passing but has never left the Shire. — John Howe

To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; — Elizabeth Gaskell

Then holding the star aloft and the bright sword advanced, Frodo, hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Every mouth you've ever kissed was just practice. All the bodies you've ever undressed and ploughed in to were preparing you for me. I don't mind tasting them in the memory of your mouth.
Was it a long journey? Did it take you long to find me?
You're here now, welcome home. — Warsan Shire

But love is a fluid thing. It's not the same for every person. The concept is. The reality isn't. When you hear people talking, they're usually trying to validate their own perception of what love is, or what it means to be in love. — Brandon Shire

I don't know when love became elusive
what i know, is that no one i know has it
my fathers arms around my mothers neck
fruit too ripe to eat, a door half way open
when your name is a just a hand i can never hold
everything i have ever believed in, becomes magic.
i think of lovers as trees, growing to and
from one another searching for the same light,
my mothers laughter in a dark room,
a photograph greying under my touch,
this is all i know how to do, carry loss around until
i begin to resemble every bad memory,
every terrible fear,
every nightmare anyone has ever had.
i ask did you ever love me?
you say of course, of course so quickly
that you sound like someone else
i ask are you made of steel? are you made of iron?
you cry on the phone, my stomach hurts
i let you leave, i need someone who knows how to stay. — Warsan Shire

But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. — J.R.R. Tolkien

When I love, I love: wholly, thoroughly, completely, drowning in everything. Every glance can be a conversation, eyes just playing and saying what needs to be said. Silence is loud, and the air becomes heavy. I want you. I want all of you. — Warsan Shire

But I am your willing sacrifice, Dustin; I am the one willing to let you go in the deep hope that you will someday come back to me, come back to that moment and that understanding.
Yes, I cannot breathe without you in my soul, but I also know that I cannot take your breath for you. I understand that now. — Brandon Shire

Frodo began to feel restless, and the old paths seemed too well-trodden. He looked at maps, and wondered what lay beyond their edges: maps made in the Shire showed mostly white spaces beyond its borders. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien understood about the things that happen after the end. Because this is after the end, this is all the Scouring of the Shire, this is figuring out how to live in the time that wasn't supposed to happen after the glorious last stand. I saved the world, or I think I did, and look, the world is still here, with sunsets and interlibrary loans. And it doesn't care about me any more than the Shire cared about Frodo. — Jo Walton

Give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn't allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right. — Warsan Shire

Listen to the breath of the rain."
They were silent for a minute. Dillon closed his eyes and tried to grasp at what Hunter experienced. Hunter moved closer and put the heat of his breath in Dillon's ear. "I want you to make love to me by the rhythm of the rain," he whispered. — Brandon Shire

But if there are many of these ruffians,' said Merry, 'it will certainly mean fighting. You won't rescue Lotho, or the Shire, just by being shocked and sad, my dear Frodo. — J.R.R. Tolkien

( ... )"He said we all have this different idea of what love is and that's what makes our circle. The more ideas and misconceptions you throw in, the larger the diameter and the harder it is to connect with someone. We," he said, squeezing Hunter's hand and signaling Margie and everyone around them, "all sit around the edge looking at everyone else around the circle. Sometimes we just settle for the person next to us because it's easy or convenient and we skip our way around its circumference, never really knowing what love is all about."
He took a sip of his Coke and kept his eyes on Margie. "But other times, you see that person across from you, staring back at you, and you fight like hell trying to get across while he does the same. If you're lucky, there's a rope you can toss over and help draw each other in, never looking away, never worrying about those still on the circumference; just you and him, pulling each other in, deeper and deeper." — Brandon Shire

in the Bree-land, at any rate, the hobbits were decent and prosperous, and no more rustic than most of their distant relatives Inside. It was not yet forgotten that there had been a time when there was much coming and going between the Shire and Bree. There was Bree-blood in the Brandybucks by all accounts. The village of Bree had some hundred stone houses of the Big Folk, mostly above the Road, nestling on the hillside with windows looking west. On that side, running in more than half a circle from the hill and back to it, there was a deep dike — J.R.R. Tolkien

Fit in here, in my palm, in my shadow, don't be bigger than my idea of you, don't be more beautiful than i can accept, don't be more human than i am willing to allow you to be and be quiet, you're too loud, even your un-belonging is loud. quiet your dreams, your voice, your hair, quiet your skin, quiet your displacement, quiet your longing, your colour, quiet your walk, your eyes. who said you could look at me like that? who said you could exist without permission? why are you even here? why aren't you shrinking? i think of you often. you vibrate. you walk into a room and the temperature changes. i lean in and almost recognise you as human. but, no. we can't have that. — Warsan Shire

Don't assume, ask. Be kind. Tell the truth. Don't say anything you can't stand behind fully. Have integrity. Tell people how you feel. — Warsan Shire

If I understand aright all that I have heard,' he said, 'I think that this task is appointed for you, Frodo; and that if you do not find a way, no one will. This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the hour has struck? — J.R.R. Tolkien

I don't know how to say it, but after last night I feel different. I seem to see ahead, in a kind of way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can't turn back. It isn't right to see Elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains, that I want - I don't rightly know what I want: but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Even now I can feel the heat from your palm as you cupped the back of my head and pulled my lips those last few inches, how you opened your body and begged me with your soul. — Brandon Shire

If you gave me
half a moon of a chance
i would
kiss the incisors
out of your mouth, clean
and hold them in my
own, like chippings
from an old mug
then
pray my tongue into
a bowl of holy water
and ask god to never
leave you thirsty. — Warsan Shire

... It's breadth, and the strength between us to know that we're ready for the next step. I want to do it this way so it lasts, and I need you to understand that for me."
"I understand."
"Do you?" Hunter asked him closely. "Then why do I still hear rejection in your voice?"
"Because I'm impulsive, and immature, and ... in love with you. — Brandon Shire

The Kitchen





Half a papaya and a palmful of sesame oil;
lately, your husband's mind has been elsewhere.

Honeyed dates, goat's milk;
you want to quiet the bloating of salt.

Coconut and ghee butter;
he kisses the back of your neck at the stove.

Cayenne and roasted pine nuts;
you offer him the hollow of your throat.

Saffron and rosemary;
you don't ask him her name.

Vine leaves and olives;
you let him lift you by the waist.

Cinnamon and tamarind;
lay you down on the kitchen counter.

Almonds soaked in rose water;
your husband is hungry.

Sweet mangoes and sugared lemon;
he had forgotten the way you taste.

Sour dough and cumin;
but she cannot make him eat, like you. — Warsan Shire

stability is like a lover with a sweet mouth upon your body one second; the next you are a tremor lying on the floor covered in rubble and old currency waiting for its return. — Warsan Shire

Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you're wearing, who you're around, what you're doing. Recreate and repeat. — Warsan Shire

Though he walked and breathed, and about him living leaves and flowers were stirred by the same cool wind as fanned his face, Frodo felt he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. When he had gone and passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire would walk there, upon the grass among elanor and niphredil in fair Lothlorien — J.R.R. Tolkien

It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them, a little. — J.R.R. Tolkien

You truly are the most astonishingly beautiful hobbit I've ever seen," he said, and Tamsyn froze.
"Hobbit??"
"Um, yes?" he said, and Tamsyn looked down at herself in panic. Her suit had disappeared and been replaced by a straight dress in a rustic homespun fabric of a drab, brownish grey. Her hair still looked the same, she established when she grabbed a handful and held it up in front of her face, but when she scrabbled up and caught a glimpse of her feet, her legs immediately lost their strength again. She thudded back down hard and grabbed her left leg, yanking her foot up to her eyes.
It was bare, large and very, very hairy.
She checked her other foot as well, hoping against all laws of probability that it would be different, and groaned in consternation when it looked the same as the left one.
"This can't be true!" she wailed, scrambling to get up again. "I'm a hobbit! — Erica Dakin

It was the way you touched me. How you explored every single inch of me before you really put your hands on me," Dillon admitted. "That first time we were in bed you searched out all the erogenous zones with your fingers, probably without even realizing it. It was subtle but very ... tactile. It made me feel wanted, I mean more than just physically. — Brandon Shire

The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do. — Warsan Shire

Hunter turned and kissed Dillon deeply before he rinsed off. He had never wished for his sight before, but he would have given anything at that moment to be able to turn and witness the beauty of the man that had just made love to him. He'd literally felt the change in Dillon's grip as he made love.
The very first time they were together, Dillon's hold was uncertain, a tentative embrace that held no absolutes, no dreams, but just now it was different; it was a grip that sat right on the edge of possession, a possession Hunter would willingly give, if asked.
But would Dillon ask, and would he be able to accept? — Brandon Shire

A long time ago he believed that he was above the men chasing him; capitulating to their secret desires and dark fears was what he did to survive, nothing more and nothing less. But now he understood that all that reasoning was nothing more than a self-assessing loop which he had used as a survival mechanism. It had run constantly but never actually went anywhere; like a rat on a flywheel, all action, no forward motion. — Brandon Shire

This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great. — J.R.R. Tolkien

We set out to save the Shire, Sam and it has been saved - but not for me. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I hear them say go home, I hear them say fucking immigrants, fucking refugees. Are they really this arrogant? Do they not know that stability is like a lover with a sweet mouth upon your body one second; the next you are a tremor lying on the floor covered in rubble and old currency waiting for its return. All I can say is, I was once like you, the apathy, the pity, the ungrateful placement and now my home is the mouth of a shark, now my home is the barrel of a gun. I'll see you on the other side. — Warsan Shire

The man thought he seemed some sad and solitary changeling child announcing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in shire and village who does not know that behind him the players have all been carried off by wolves. — Cormac McCarthy

Not everyone is okay with living like an open wound. But the thing about open wounds is that, well, you aren't ignoring it. You're healing; the fresh air can get to it. It's honest. You aren't hiding who you are. You aren't rotting. People can give you advice on how to heal without scarring badly. But on the other hand there are some people who'll feel uncomfortable around you. Some will even point and laugh. But we all have wounds. — Warsan Shire

Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you, she says. Slow like cancer in the breast or fast like a machete in the neck. — Warsan Shire

On the night of our secret wedding
when he held me in his mouth like a promise
until his tongue grew tired and fell asleep,
I lay awake to keep the memory alive.
In the morning I begged him back to bed.
Running late, he kissed my ankles and left.
I stayed like a secret in his bed for days
until his mother found me.
I showed her my gold ring,
I stood in front of her naked,
waved my hands in her face.
She sank to the floor and cried.
At his funeral, no one knew my name.
I sat behind his aunts,
they sucked on dates soaked in oil.
The last thing he tasted was me. — Warsan Shire

There's nothing rebellious about loving something that can't love you. You're a woman, you should have known that men in the city would split you in half searching for their fathers in between your legs. — Warsan Shire

Dear me! We Tooks and Brandybucks, we can't live long on the heights.'
'No,' said Merry. 'I can't. Not yet, at any rate. But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honour them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The desperate resilience,the annoyed flamboyance;his personable passivity and his phobic aggressiveness; all trapped in the clever wrinkles of his fingers, the hard unsociable cast of his knuckles, the safe hopelessness of the pads. — Brandon Shire

Gavin turned us to face Josh, a satisfied grin springing up when he noticed the condition of Josh's clothes.
"Thanks for the last-minute invitation, man." Josh chuckled, patting Gavin on the shoulder. "Shall I do the honors, Mr. Suave?"
"Sure thing, Frodo Baggins. By the way, I hear the Shire has impeccable dinner parties this time of year." The corners of Gavin's lips twitched and his eyebrows shot up as he gestured to a food stain of some sort near the collar of Josh's white shirt.
Josh's chin shot down to follow Gavin's amusement and he quickly tried to wipe away the crumbs. "Yeah, well ... you know how we hobbits like to eat. — Rachael Wade

Yes, I would. I can read the arrest report now. Two blind men fighting over a hot, gay stud-muffin. My mom would freak out and her gaggle of friends would make sure that everybody in town knew about her blind, gay son beating someone down over a man. — Brandon Shire

David Shire and I have been happily married for 21 years! We have a 12-year-old son. David is a genius. He writes the most magnificent music and he is a devoted and loving husband and father. I am so blessed! — Didi Conn

The only darkness we should allow into our lives is the night, for even then, we have the moon. — Warsan Shire

But handsome is as handsome does, as we say in the Shire; and I daresay we shall all look much the same after lying for days in hedges and ditches. — J.R.R. Tolkien

What baron or squire Or knight of the shire Lives half so well as a holy friar. — John O'Keefe

Point Partageuse got its name from French explorers who mapped the cape that jutted from the south-western corner of the Australian continent well before the British dash to colonize the west began in 1826. Since then, settlers had trickled north from Albany and south from the Swan River Colony, laying claim to the virgin forests in the hundreds of miles between. Cathedral-high trees were felled with handsaws to create grazing pasture; scrawny roads were hewn inch by stubborn inch by pale-skinned fellows with teams of shire horses, as this land, which had never before been scarred by man, was excoriated and burned, mapped and measured and meted out to those willing to try their luck in a hemisphere which might bring them desperation, death, or fortune beyond their dreams. — M.L. Stedman

And if Sam considered himself lucky, Frodo knew he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I had these made special. The design is raised instead of carved in. Can you feel it?" Dillon asked.
Hunter ran his fingertip over the outside of the ring. He nodded as a tear formed in the corner of his eye.
"Can you tell me what it is?" Dillon asked quietly.
Hunter nodded and his voice choked. "Two people ... "
"Two men," Dillon corrected.
"Two men," Hunter said, "pulling each other into the center of a circle."
Dillon watched his single tear slip and start sliding down his cheek. "Would you step into that circle with me, Hunter?"
Hunter nodded, a small sound escaping him. "Yes. — Brandon Shire

Sad people have the gift of time, while the world dizzies everyone else; they remain stagnant, their bodies refusing to follow pace with the universe. With these kind of people everything aches for too long, everything moves without rush, wounds are always wet. — Warsan Shire

Don't even talk to me about being a mother. You were never a mother! Just the psychotic twat I lived with for the first fourteen years. — Brandon Shire

You were like an ulcer on the inside of my cheek that my tongue could not stop touching.
loving you was like watching a stranger clean a week old wound; i felt sick, but i wanted more. — Warsan Shire

There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest? — J.R.R. Tolkien

Are you in pain, Frodo?' said Gandalf quietly as he rode by Frodo's side.
'Well, yes I am,' said Frodo. 'It is my shoulder. The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. It was a year ago today.'
'Alas! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,' said Gandalf.
'I fear it may be so with mine,' said Frodo. 'There is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?'
Gandalf did not answer. — J.R.R. Tolkien

She wears a shirt that fits tight to her tits and reads: I never received my acceptance letter from Hogwarts, so I'm leaving the Shire to become a Jedi! — Alexa Riley

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. — Warsan Shire

I left the Shire,
got 7 outstanding N.E.W.T.'s
and became a Vampire;
Because Winter is Coming... — Various

I make a conscious decision to get involved with guys who are the worst levels of asshole. They're like the Bilbo Douchebaggins from the Shire of Douchey-ness. — Sadie Grubor

Why do you live in your body like you will be given another? As if it were temporary. You starve it, you let anyone touch it, you berate it. Tell it that it should be completely different. You tug at your soft flesh, wish it thinner, wish it gone. You fall in love with those who praise the way it sighs under their hands, but who praises the way it holds up your weight, even when you are falling apart? — Warsan Shire

And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End. And if Sam thought himself lucky, Frodo knew that he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. When the labours or repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a good deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Mr. Suttree it is our understanding that at curfew rightly decreed by law and in that hour wherein night draws to its proper close and the new day commences and contrary to conduct befitting a person of your station you betook yourself to various low places within the shire of McAnally and there did squander several ensuing years in the company of thieves, derelicts, miscreants, pariahs, poltroons, spalpeens, curmudgeons, clotpolls, murderers, gamblers, bawds, whores, trulls, brigands, topers, tosspots, sots and archsots, lobcocks, smellsmocks, runagates, rakes, and other assorted and felonious debauchees.
I was drunk, cried Suttree. — Cormac McCarthy

Snow is kind of weird," Dillon said. "It's so slow, drifts a little here and there, and it doesn't make much noise," he said as he looked at Hunter. "I think I want to skip the symphony," he added as he untied Hunter's tie and slipped it from around his neck. " I would like very much for us to stay in and see if you can match its rhythm. What do you think? — Brandon Shire

Look, my friends!' he called. 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven princeling in! If it were known that hobbits had such hides, all the hunters of Middle Earth would be riding to the Shire. — J.R.R. Tolkien

When you begin to care too much about what everyone else says, your confidence shrinks and you start to feel like insignificant, little Jack in a strange land of intimidating giants. But when you come to realize that opinions are as diverse and plentiful as dried beans, you might reach the conclusion that your own is of the greatest worth. That's when your confidence grows, and soon you find yourself striding like Gandalf the wondrous wizard among common hobbits in the shire. Respecting your own opinion is the magic that transforms both you and your world. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's. As a kid growing up with books and films and stories instead of friends, that was always the narrative injustice that upset me more than anything else. I felt it sometimes like a sharp pain under the ribcage, the kind of chest pain that lasts for minutes and hours and might be nothing at all or might mean you're slowly dying of something mundane and awful. It's a feeling that hit when I understood how few girls got to go on adventures. I started reading science fiction and fantasy long before Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, before mainstream female leads very occasionally got more at the end of the story than together with the protagonist. Sure, there were tomboys and bad girls, but they were freaks and were usually killed off or married off quickly. Lady hobbits didn't bring the ring to Mordor. They stayed at home in the shire. — Laurie Penny