02UndatedHe must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot...John Gardner / quote ↗
03UndatedI had a chance. I knew I had no more than that. it's all a hero asks for.John Gardner / quote ↗
04UndatedThe point is, whether or not they show it at dinner parties, writers learn, by a necessity of their trade, to be the sharpest of observers.John Gardner / quote ↗
05UndatedBecause his art is sucha difficult one, the writer is not likely to advance in the worldas visibly as do his neighbors: while his best friends from highschool or college are becoming junior partners in prestigiouslaw firms, or opening their own mortuaries, the writer may bestill sweating out his first novel.John Gardner / quote ↗
06UndatedLike other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partlynatural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, mostof which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity orincivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections);obstinacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal tobelieve what all sensible people know is true); childishness (anapparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondnessfor daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of properrespect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for cryingover nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixationor both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking,smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness andneatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes);remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usualfeature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strangeadmixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness,the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelingsfor or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak ofcunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness,and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurableaddiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good.John Gardner / quote ↗
07UndatedAll order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal — a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world — two snake pits.John Gardner / quote ↗
08UndatedSo childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.John Gardner / quote ↗
09UndatedMastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather.John Gardner / quote ↗
10Undated...{N}othing is harder for the developing writer than overcoming his anxiety that he is fooling himself and cheating or embarrassing his family and friends.John Gardner / quote ↗
11UndatedReal suspense comes with moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices. False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurrence of one damned thing after another.John Gardner / quote ↗
12UndatedIt was said in the old days that every year Thor made a circle around Middle-earth, beating back the enemies of order. Thor got older every year, and the circle occupied by gods and men grew smaller. The wisdom god, Woden, went out to the king of the trolls, got him in an armlock, and demanded to know of him how order might triumph over chaos."Give me your left eye," said the king of the trolls, "and I'll tell you." Without hesitation, Woden gave up his left eye. "Now tellJohn Gardner / quote ↗
14UndatedGo ahead, scoff, he said, petulant. Except in the life of a hero, the whole world's meaningless. The hero sees values beyond what's possible. That's the nature of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile.John Gardner / quote ↗
15UndatedGod be kind to all good Samaritans and also bad ones. For such is the kingdom of heaven.John Gardner / quote ↗
16UndatedWe slip into a dream, forgetting the room we're sitting in, forgetting it's lunchtime or time to go to work. We recreate, with minor and for the most part unimportant changes, the vivid and continuous dream the writer worked out in his mind (revising and revising until he got it right) and captured in language so that other human beings, whenever they feel like it, may open his book and dream that dream again.John Gardner / quote ↗
