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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.

John Gardner

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John Gardner
Age: 49 †
Born: 1933
Born: July 21
Died: 1982
Died: September 14
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Translator
Writer
Kingston
John Champlin Gardner Jr.
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Boat
Small
Helps
Helping
Sea
Writing
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More quotes by John Gardner

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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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We know that where community exists in confers upon its members identity, a sense of belonging, and a measure of security. . . . Communities are the ground-level generators and preservers of values and ethical systems.
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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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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 couldn't go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words--changing nothing.
John Gardner
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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.
John Gardner
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When I was a child I truly loved: Unthinking love as calm and deep As the North Sea. But I have lived, And now I do not sleep.
John Gardner
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So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.
John Gardner
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Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.
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Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.
John Gardner
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When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.
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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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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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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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Find a pile of gold and sit on it.
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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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As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.
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Poor Grendel's had an accident. So may you all.
John Gardner
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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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Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.
John Gardner