"Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality."
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Quote collection
John Gardner quotes (page 1 of 2)
37 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see."
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"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."
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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 as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged yourself."
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"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."
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"What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience."
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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 can."
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"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."
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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 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."
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"Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality."
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"The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus."
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"A common and usually unfortunate answer is “Write about what you know.” Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination, nothing is quicker to turn on the psyche's censoring devices and distortion systems, than trying to write truthfully."
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"One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave."
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"When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless."
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"As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't."
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"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
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"The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs."
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"One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time."
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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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"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."
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