129 Quotes by John Gardner

Poor Grendel’s had an accident. So may you all.

It is this experience of seeing something one has written come alive – literally, not metaphorically, a character or scene daemonically entering the world by its own strange power, so that the writer feels not the creator but only the instrument, or conjurer, the priest who stumbled onto the magic spell – it is this experience of tapping some magic source that makes the writer an addict, willing to give up almost anything for his art, and makes him, if he fails, such a miserable human being.

True criticism praises true art for what it does-praises as plainly and comprehensively as possible-and denounces false art for its failure to do art’s proper work. No easy task, the task of the critic, since the trolls are masters of disguise.

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

A true work of fiction does all of the following things, and does them elegantly, efficiently: it creates a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s mind; it is implicitly philosophical; it fulfills or at least deals with all of the expectations it sets up; and it strikes us, in the end, not simply as a thing done but as a shining performance.

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

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.

Across the hidden places of my heart, You search me out; Following the tracery of my daily life So Death can never conquer The secret generations of our souls. The.

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