John Gardner

Poor Grendel's had an accident. So may you all.

— John Gardner

Find a pile of gold and sit on it.

— John Gardner

Beauty requires contrast.

— John Gardner

“But dragons, my boy, have a whole different kind of mind.”

— John Gardner

“Not everyone is capable of writing junk fiction: It requires an authentic junk mind.”

— John Gardner

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.

— John Gardner

“I know what's in your mind. I know everything. That's what makes me so sick and old and tired.”

— John Gardner

Fate often enough will spare a man if his courage holds.

— John Gardner

Great things happen nationally when topmost leadership is goaded and supported from below.

— John Gardner

“The world is all pointless accident... I exist, nothing else.”

— John Gardner

Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination than only writing about what you know

— John Gardner

“Where religious values might be relative, intellectual values fleeting, moral values ambiguous, and aesthetic values dependent upon an observer, the existence of…

— John Gardner

When I was a child I truly loved: Unthinking love as calm and deep As the North Sea. But I have lived,…

— John Gardner

“Stars, spattered out through lifeless night from end to end, like jewels scattered in a dead king's grave, tease, torment my wits…

— John Gardner

“There is some realm where feelings become birds and dark sky, and spirit is more solid than stone.”

— John Gardner

“He could forget all these people, just like that, become fond again of strangers and leave them too.”

— John Gardner

“All to often, on the long road up, young leaders become servants of what is rather than shapers of what might be.”

— John Gardner

“Two things can keep the common reader going, argument or story. (Both are always involved, however subtly, in good fiction.)”

— John Gardner

“...{N}othing is harder for the developing writer than overcoming his anxiety that he is fooling himself and cheating or embarrassing his family…

— John Gardner

By the time you've run your mind through it a hundred times, relentlessly worked out every tic of terror, it's lost its…

— John Gardner

“As in the universe every atom has an effect, however minuscule, on every other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of…

— John Gardner

“What the best fiction does is make powerful affirmations of familiar truths...the trivial fiction which times filters out is that which either…

— John Gardner

“As in the universe every atom has an effect, however miniscule, on every other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of…

— John Gardner

“The question one asks of the young writer who wants to know if he's got what it takes is this: "Is writing…

— John Gardner

“Pick an apocalypse, any apocalypse. A sea of black oil and dead things. No wind. No light. Nothing stirring, not even an…

— John Gardner

“Go ahead, scoff, he said, petulant. Except in the life of a hero, the whole world's meaningless. The hero sees values beyond…

— John Gardner

“No fiction can have real interest if the central character is not an agent struggling for his or her own goals but…

— John Gardner

“Nothing is sillier than the creative writing teacher's dictum "Write about what you know." But whether you're writing about people or dragons,…

— John Gardner

“Fiction, like sculpture or painting, begins with a rough sketch. One gets down the characters and their behavior any way one can,…

— john gardner

“The age old idea of human dignity comes to apply even to the indigent, even to the slaves, even to immigrants, now…

— John Gardner

“Daemonic compulsiveness can kill as easily as it can save. The true novelist must be at once driven and indifferent. Van Gogh…

— John Gardner

“From all we have said about plotting in general it should be evident that even in those modern plots in which events…

— John Gardner

“One has to be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most…

— john gardner

“In writing short stories—as in writing novels—take one thing at a time. (For some writers, this advice I'm giving may apply best…

— John Gardner

“It was said in the old days that every year Thor made a circle around Middle-earth, beating back the enemies of order.…

— John Gardner

“It's not easy to kill a mountain goat. He thinks with his spine.”

— John Gardner

“[the writer] must copy, with his finite mind, the process of the infinite 'I AM.”

— John Gardner

“it’s a law of the universe that 87 percent of all people in all professions are incompetent.”

— John Gardner

“Talking, talking, spinning like a spell, pale skin of words that closes me in like a coffin.”

— John Gardner

“Same thing, kings and poets. Different kinds of liars.”

— John Gardner