John Gardner
John Gardner
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 July 1933
CountryUnited States of America
spring inspiration writing
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 not profound.
childhood feel-good age
So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.
gold
Find a pile of gold and sit on it.
memories boys past
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, like other low creatures: no higher faculties than memory and perception. But dragons, my boy, have a whole different kind of mind.' He stretched his mouth in a kind of smile, no trace of pleasure in it. 'We are from the mountaintop: all time, all space. We see in one instant the passionate vision and the blowout.
fashion business coins
The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.
kindness thoughtful people
When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.
stupid evil may
They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction. 'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all.
goes-on whispering world
I couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words--changing nothing.
teeth grows pursue
Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.
fiction emotion belief
The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.
jesus thumbs ifs
As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.
enmity world saws
i understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. i understood that, finally and absolutely, i alone exist. all the rest, i saw, is merely what pushes me, or what i push against, blindly - as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. i create the whole universe, blink by blink.
leadership great-things happens
Great things happen nationally when topmost leadership is goaded and supported from below.
community identity levels
We know that where community exists in confers upon its members identity, a sense of belonging, and a measure of security. . . . Communities are the ground-level generators and preservers of values and ethical systems.