I reckon it would take you 40 hours to read the first book out loud. Cutting that to three hours -- well, what can you do? The answer is, abridge, ... If you know the story, you can see them skipping.

First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, ''I believe,'' three times.

There's another generation sewn up,

Tolkien reintroduced the world of fairy tale to a new audience. It was a very traditional image of fairy tale -- elves, dwarves, trolls, dragons, wizards. Those have all come out of fairy tales. But Tolkien put the whole thing on the map, ... A lot of that stuff is traditional material that he has codified and rationalized in a kind of 20th-century way.

That's a first line many have heard, whether or not they've read the book.

I've read every oyster book there is, and I always look at oysters first on any menu.