Quotable: Tolkien, Sam

Frodo after a few mouthfuls of lembas settled deep into the brown fern and went to sleep. Sam looked at him . . . Frodo’s face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiselling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: ‘I love him. He’s like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.’

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994, 638.

I cannot help but rewrite this section in my mind to a more modern reading.

“As Frodo laid down to sleep, Sam took the opportunity to play Bejeweled.”

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