129 Quotes by John Gardner

I write for those who desire, not publication at any cost, but publication one can be proud of--serious, honest fiction, the kind of novel that readers will find they enjoy reading more than once, the kind of fiction likely to survive.

To be psychologically suited for membership in what I have called the highest class of novelists, the writer must be not only capable of understanding people different from himself but fascinated by such people . . . and have sufficient self-esteem that he is not threatened by difference.

Heidegger’s parlamblings on ‘Nothing’ and ‘Not’ and ‘the Nothing that Nothings’ were the last supposedly respectable gasp of classical philosophy.

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

When all the illusions of personal immortality are stripped away, there is only the act to maintain the freedom to act.

Create the noblest constitution the mind of man can frame: eventually fools will crumple it.

I will tell you the truth: the mistake is man. For his heart is restless, and his brain a crisis brain, short-sighted, mechanical, dangerous.

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.

Lenox Township has 1,300 homes right now. We think some time in the next 10 years we'll build about 4,000 homes. We should see a 400-home increase in just the next few years.