Gilgamesh said to him, to Utnapishtim the remote, "What…

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

— John Gardner

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

— John Gardner

“They only think they think. No total vision, total system, merely schemes with a vague family resemblance, no more identity than bridges and, say,…

— John Gardner

“Except in stock locutions, such as "You were paid yesterday," "The Germans were defeated," or "The project was abandoned," the passive voice is virtually…

— John Gardner

“The instruction here is not for every kind of writer - not for the writer of nurse books or thrillers or porno or the…

— John Gardner

“Good writers may “tell” about almost anything in fiction except the characters’ feelings. One may tell the reader that the character went to a…

— John Gardner

“the chief offense in bad fiction: we sense that characters are being manipulated, forced to do things they would not really do.”

— John Gardner

“There seems little or no hope for the adult writer who produces sentences like these: "Her cheeks were thick and smooth and held a…

— John Gardner

“In any long fiction, Henry James remarked, use of the first-person point of view is barbaric. James may go too far, but his point…

— John Gardner

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

— John Gardner

A nation that values bad philosophy above good plumbing will have neither good philosophy nor good plumbing

— John Gardner

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else…

— John Gardner

Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.

— 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 to a…

— John Gardner

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…

— John Gardner