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I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.

Lord of the Rings was my first experience making movies and at the time, I had no ideas how movies were done. I thought that's the way they're done, so in a way, I had nothing to compare it to.

When you see 'Lord of the Rings,' you want to feel like you've been dropped into it and that you're part of it. You don't want to be aware of how it's being done; you just want it to feel really seamless.

I think even back as far as 'Lord of the Rings,' there was always the chance that 'The Hobbit' would be made, even way back then. Of course at that point, Peter Jackson didn't probably think at that point that he'd be directing it.

The Lord of the Rings movie set an entirely new standard for fantasy in the movies.

People sometimes ask who I would cast in my books and I never have any idea. I don't think I could ever write a book thinking of it as a movie the whole time. This would be like building a house and filling it with furniture just so you could have blueprints.

I never dreamed in a million years that 'The Lord of the Rings' would be nominated for an Oscar. Those types of fantasy movies never got nominations.

If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think.

I'm not of the opinion that the next logical step for a book is for it to be made into a film.