129 Quotes by John Gardner

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

In university courses we do exercises. Term papers, quizzes, final examinations are not meant for publication. We move through a course on Dostoevsky or Poe as we move through a mildly good cocktail party, picking up the good bits of food or conversation, bearing with the rest, going home when it comes to seem the reasonable thing to do. Art, at those moments when it feels most like art -- when we feel most alive, most alert, most triumphant -- is less like a cocktail party than a tank full of sharks.

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

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

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.

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