“Writer's block comes from the feeling that one is doing the wrong thing or doing the right thing badly. Fiction written for the wrong reason may fail to satisfy the motive behind it and thus may block the writer, as… — John Gardner Copy Share Image
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. — 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
Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see. — John Gardner Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
