John Gardner Quotes

44 quotes in 797 categories

• In university courses we do exercises. Term papers, quizzes, final examinations are not meant for publication. We move through a course on Dostoevsky or Poe…
• One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts…
• Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.
• When I was a child I truly loved: Unthinking love as calm and deep As the North Sea. But I have lived, And now I…
• So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.
• Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination than only writing about what you know
• Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if…
• Find a pile of gold and sit on it.
• An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and…
• The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is…
• I know everything, you see,' the old voice wheedled. 'The beginning, the present, the end. Everything. You now, you see the past and the present,…
• One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time,…
• It's a staggering transition for high school students that found they could study five hours a week and make As and Bs.
• A nation that values bad philosophy above good plumbing will have neither good philosophy nor good plumbing
• By the time you've run your mind through it a hundred times, relentlessly worked out every tic of terror, it's lost its power over you...Soon…
• So, when I write a piece of fiction I select my characters and settings and so on because they have a bearing, at least to…
• Beauty requires contrast.
• The hero sees values beyond what's possible. That's the nature of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle…
• Fate often enough will spare a man if his courage holds.
• If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a…

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