"So, when I write a piece of fiction……" — John Gardner
"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 me, on the old unanswerable philosophical questions. And as I spin out the action, Im always very concerned with springing discoveries, actual philosophical discoveries. But at the same time Im concerned and finally more concerned with what the discoveries do to the character who makes them, and to the people around him. Its that that makes me not really a philosopher, but a novelist."
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John Gardner
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42 Quotes by John Gardner
John Gardner has 42 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure…
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The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.
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Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.
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They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction. 'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all.
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...ultimately it come down to, are you making or are you destroying? If you try very hard to create ways…
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People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might…
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Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.
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As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the…
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It would be, for me, mere pointless pleasure, an illusion of order for this one frail, foolish, flicker-flash in the…
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I couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with…
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Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.
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There is no limit to desire but desire's needs.
See all 42 quotes by John Gardner »
More Action Quotes
This quote is filed under Action Quotes,
one of 8,300 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
— Hannah Arendt
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Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then…
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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.
— Hannah Arendt
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All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
— Aristotle
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Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate…
— Aristotle
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Well begun is half done.
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A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole…
— Aristotle
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Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.
— Aristotle
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We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
— Aristotle
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Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for…
— Aristotle
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What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition…
— Aristotle
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