John Gardner Quotes
Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.
Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.
We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.
What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.
The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.
Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.
One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.
One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.
The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.
The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.
Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.
Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.
When I was a child I truly loved: Unthinking love as calm and deep As the North Sea. But I have lived, And now I do not sleep.
Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather.
So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.
It would be, for me, mere pointless pleasure, an illusion of order for this one frail, foolish, flicker-flash in the long dull fall of eternity.
I couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words--changing nothing.
They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction. 'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all.
Great things happen nationally when topmost leadership is goaded and supported from below.
God be kind to all good Samaritans and also bad ones. For such is the kingdom of heaven.
Real suspense comes with moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices. False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurrence of one damned thing after another.
...{N}othing is harder for the developing writer than overcoming his anxiety that he is fooling himself and cheating or embarrassing his family and friends.
All order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal — a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world — two snake pits.
The point is, whether or not they show it at dinner parties, writers learn, by a necessity of their trade, to be the sharpest of observers.
When I was a child I truly loved:Unthinking love as calm and deepAs the North Sea. But I have lived, And now I do not sleep.
The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot.
The people I've known who wanted to become writers, knowing what it meant, did become writers.
They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.'Poor Grendel's had an accident, ' I whisper. 'So may you all.
