Fiction Quotes by 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

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