The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No… — John Gardner Copy Share Image
“Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists only so that the character has someplace to stand. Plot exists so the… — John Gardner Copy Share Image
If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say… — John Gardner Copy Share Image
“Yes! Clumly had thought. There it was. Whatever it meant, spiritualistic trash for old ladies or the roaring secret of life and… — John Gardner Copy Share Image
“It is the importance of this quality of generosity in fiction that requires a measure of childishness in the writer. People who… — John Gardner Copy Share Image
“That is their happiness: they see all life without observing it. They’re buried in it like crabs in mud. Except men, of… — John Gardner Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“All to often, on the long road up, young leaders become servants of what is rather than shapers of what might be.” — John Gardner Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“the chief offense in bad fiction: we sense that characters are being manipulated, forced to do things they would not really do.” — John Gardner Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination than only writing about what you know — John Gardner Copy Share Image
A nation that values bad philosophy above good plumbing will have neither good philosophy nor good plumbing — John Gardner Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
