“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
In an "Ephemera" blog post http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html
This also appears in Ch. 10 of The Value of Nothing (2010) by Raj Patel, who later acknowledged it was a borrowed joke in "Citation Alert!" http://rajpatel.org/2010/01/21/citation-alert/ (21 January 2010) at rajpatel.org.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
John Rogers 3
writer, comedian and producer from the United StatesRelated quotes

“One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”

Plugged In: Can Elon Musk lead the way to an electric-car future?, New Yorker, 24 August 2009, 7 February 2015 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/24/plugged-in,

Quoted in "Axl Rose: The Rolling Stone Interview" http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/15808548/axl_rose_the_rolling_stone_interview/9 by Kim Neely, Rolling Stone, No. 627 (2 April 1992)

It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=IiKY1H0A_QEC&pg=PT102 (Hyperion, 2005).
Cf. Wisdom from It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider https://books.google.com/books?id=EEiqMIgAl3UC&pg=PA49 (White Plains, N. Y.: Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 2007), p. 49.
"How to Get the Best of Your Children"
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957)

Comments on the North American Events (1862)
Context: Lincoln is not the product of a popular revolution. This plebeian, who worked his way up from stone-breaker to Senator in Illinois, without intellectual brilliance, without a particularly outstanding character, without exceptional importance-an average person of good will, was placed at the top by the interplay of the forces of universal suffrage unaware of the great issues at stake. The new world has never achieved a greater triumph than by this demonstration that, given its political and social organisation, ordinary people of good will can accomplish feats which only heroes could accomplish in the old world!