John Gardner Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about John Gardner

John Gardner Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational John Gardner quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

[the writer] must copy, with his finite mind, the process of the infinite 'I AM. — John Gardner

Most creative-writing teachers have had the experience of occasionally helping to produce, by accident, a pornographer. — John Gardner

It would be, for me, mere pointless pleasure, an illusion of order for this one frail, foolish, flicker-flash in the long dull fall of eternity. — John Gardner

I should have cracked his skull mid song and sent his blood spraying out wet through the mead hall like a shocking change of key. — John Gardner

the world: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. . — John Gardner

Fate often enough will spare a man if his courage holds. — John Gardner

All of us celebrate our values in our behavior. — John W. Gardner

It enraged me. It was their confidence, maybe - their blissful, swinish ignorance, their bumptious self-satisfaction, and, worst of all, their hope. — John Gardner

Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather. — John Gardner

Great things happen nationally when topmost leadership is goaded and supported from below. — John Gardner

The people I've known who wanted to become writers, knowing what it meant, did become writers. — John Gardner

It's a law of the universe that 87 percent of all people in all professions are incompetent. — John Gardner

What do you call the Hrothgar-wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked? — John Gardner

It's not easy to kill a mountain goat. He thinks with his spine. — John Gardner

Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them. — John W. Gardner

There is no limit to desire but desire's needs. — John Gardner

All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species. — John W. Gardner

Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices. — John W. Gardner

If the modern leader doesn't know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance. — John W. Gardner

In the artist's recreation of the world we are enabled to see the world. — John W. Gardner

If you don't give your kid freedom to make choices with money, including stupid choices, he'll make plenty when he gets to college. — John W. Gardner

The individual who has become a stranger to himself has lost the capacity for genuine self-renewal. — John W. Gardner

It is one of the ironies of history that reformers so often misjudge the consequences of their reforms. — John W. Gardner

The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions. — John W. Gardner

We have to face the fact that most men and women out there are more stale than they know, more bored than they care to admit. — John W. Gardner

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred. — John W. Gardner

Life is like a drawing without an eraser — John W. Gardner

The best kept secret in America today is that people would rather work hard for something they believe in than live a life of aimless diversion. — John W. Gardner

There is some realm where feelings become birds and dark sky, and spirit is more solid than stone. — John Gardner

History never looks like history when you are living through it. — John W. Gardner

We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery - crocus on a garbage heap. — John W. Gardner

Theme is not imposed on the story but evoked from within it- initially an intuitive but finally an intellectual act on the part of a writer. — John Gardner

It's a staggering transition for high school students that found they could study five hours a week and make As and Bs. — John W. Gardner

In non-fiction, I found John Gardner's two writing books to be tremendously helpful. — Ann Leckie

The future is as dark, as unreal, as the past. — John Gardner

The cynic says, 'One man can't do anything.' I say, 'Only one man can do anything.' — John W. Gardner

He could forget all these people, just like that, become fond again of strangers and leave them too. — John Gardner

He had glimpsed a glorious ideal, had struggled toward it and seized it and come to understand it, and was disappointed. One could sympathize. — John Gardner

I cannot believe such monstrous energy of grief can lead to nothing! — John Gardner

One of the reasons mature people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure. — John W. Gardner

Thus I fled, ridiculous hairy creature torn apart by poetry — John Gardner

My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it. — John Gardner

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

Poor Grendel's had an accident. So may you all. — John Gardner

The writer is more servant than master of his story. — John Gardner

One sign of a writer's potential is his especially sharp ear - and eye - for language. — John Gardner

When hiring key employees, there are only two qualities to look for: judgement and taste. Almost everything else can be bought by the yard. — John W. Gardner

The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot. — John Gardner

One has to be just a little crazy to write a great novel — John Gardner

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't. — John Gardner

He was saner than anyone --had fallen out of the world of illusion: love, interesting work, hope for the future. — 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

To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning. — John W. Gardner

Do you think it possible for a woman to love two men at the same time?' 'A man can love two women, so I see no problem. — John Gardner

So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age. — John Gardner

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale. — John W. Gardner

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government. — John W. Gardner

Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests. — John W. Gardner

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

A prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive. — John W. Gardner

I had a chance. I knew I had no more than that. it's all a hero asks for. — John Gardner

It is the nature of stupid people to hide their perplexity and attack what they cannot grasp. — John Gardner

I couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words
changing nothing. — John Gardner

Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling; true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents. — John W. Gardner

I have eaten several priests. They sit on the stomach like duck eggs. — John Gardner

Art is as original and important as it is precisely because it does not start out with clear knowledge of what it means to say. — John Gardner

The trick, of course, is to find a profession you like and one that will also feed your writing, and not eat up all your time. — John Gardner

Heidegger's parlamblings on 'Nothing' and 'Not' and 'the Nothing that Nothings' were the last supposedly respectable gasp of classical philosophy. — John Gardner

Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see. — John Gardner

Bad art is always basically creepy; that is its first and most obvious identifying sign — John Gardner

The world loves talent but pays off on character. — John W. Gardner

Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce. — John Gardner

A story is like a machine with numerous gears: it should contain no gear that doesn't turn something — John Gardner

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless. — John Gardner

The world is all pointless accident ... I exist, nothing else. — John Gardner

Not everyone is capable of writing junk fiction: It requires an authentic junk mind. — John Gardner

It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six. — John W. Gardner

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality. — John Gardner

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. — John W. 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

I know what's in your mind. I know everything. That's what makes me so sick and old and tired. — John Gardner

Life is an endless process of self-discovery. — John W. Gardner

Perhaps the most striking feature of the [nonprofit] sector is its relative freedom from constraints and its resulting pluralism. — John W. Gardner

I wonder which one of us God finds more uninteresting. — John Gardner

But dragons, my boy, have a whole different kind of mind. — John Gardner

One man interacting creatively with others can move the world. — John W. Gardner

Standing on an open hill, I imagine muffled footsteps overhead. — John Gardner

They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.
'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all. — John Gardner

Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess. — John W. Gardner

True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents. — John W. Gardner

Space hurls outwards, falconswift, mounting like an irreversible justice, a final disease — John Gardner

All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose. — John W. Gardner

If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are. — John W. Gardner

Find a pile of gold and sit on it. — John Gardner

The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs. — John Gardner

The world resists me and I resist the world. — John Gardner

What true materialist would settle for a MacDonald's hamburger? — John Gardner

Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are. — John W. Gardner

The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be. — John W. Gardner

Renewal is not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes. — John W. Gardner