Boat Quote by John Gardner

“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

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

John Gardner

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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

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

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“Except in stock locutions, such as "You were paid yesterday," "The Germans were defeated," or "The project was abandoned," the passive voice is virtually useless in fiction except when used for comic effect, as when the writer mimics some fool's slightly pompous way of speaking or quotes some institutional directive. The active voice is almost invariably more direct and vivid:…

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 cheaper sort of sci-fi - though it is true that what holds for the most serious kind of fiction will generally hold for junk fiction as well. (Not everyone is capable of writing junk fiction: It…

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 private school (one need not show a scene at the private school if the scene has no importance for the rest of the narrative), or one may tell the reader that the character hates spaghetti; but…

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

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“There seems little or no hope for the adult writer who produces sentences like these: "Her cheeks were thick and smooth and held a healthy natural red color. The heavy lines under them, her jowls, extended to the intersection of her lips and gave her a thick-lipped frown most of the time." The phrase "Her cheeks were thick and smooth"…

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 is worth considering. First person locks us in one character's mind, locks us to one kind of diction throughout, locks out possibilities of going deeply into various characters' minds and so forth. …Vulgar diction in the…

John Gardner

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

John Gardner

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

John Gardner

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

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More Boat quotes

I was 3-years-old - to this day it is a vivid memory. My family and I were on a boat, catching fish. As one fish was caught, he was writhing, then he was thrown against the side of the boat. You couldn't disguise what it was. This was what we did to animals to eat them. The animal went from…

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When I get a chance to play golf or go on a boat with good people, take the boat out and put some lobsters…

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Fly-fishing for wild trout on quiet waters must be one of the toughest and craziest ways to catch fish ever invented by man, as…

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It was just the sort of yatch you'd expect a rock promoter to have. Mirrored ceilings, marble, Jacuzzis and leopard-skin everything, it made the…

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It's a hindrance in trying to get a serious acting role. The minute a producer has a script and my name comes up, they…

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Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there’s a current and just stare into the water. I don’t…

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The trouble is, you can't properly present something you don't believe in.

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You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles…

Pablo Neruda

A film is a boat which is always on the point of sinking-it always tends to break up as you go along and drag…

Francois Truffaut

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I took one guitar lesson, and they wanted me to play 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' or 'Michael Row the Boat Ashore,' and that…

Rick Nielsen

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I was 35 years old and in a position to take a shot at whatever I wanted to try. The Air Force said I…

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We wanted a musical number that would capture the exhilaration of being out on a boat as they were and sailing with the stars and all that. So that's the origin of We Know the Way. From very early on we said, for an audience that doesn't know this, what we need a song that can really have the kind…

John Musker

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Boat Quote by John Gardner

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