Explore Quotes by John Gardner

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

To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write [...] so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write [...] so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. 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 way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living. The true artist [...] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful--

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

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

There is no limit to desire but desire's needs.

Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.

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

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.

As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another... Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from 'inspiration' or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged yourself.