Standing on an open hill, I imagine muffled footsteps overhead.
John GardnerThey watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.
'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all.
Tags: literature historical-fiction fiction last-lines retelling
...ultimately it come down to, are you making or are you destroying? If you try very hard to create ways of living, create dreams of what is possible, then you win. If you don't, you may make a fortune in ten years, but you're not going to be read in twenty years, and that's that.
John GardnerTags: morality paris-review-interview
We need to stop excusing mediocre and downright pernicious art, stop 'taking it for what it’s worth' as we take our fast foods, our overpriced cars that are no good, the overpriced houses we spend all our lives fixing, our television programs, our schools thrown up like barricades in the way of young minds, our brainless fat religions, our poisonous air, our incredible cult of sports, and our ritual of fornicating with all pretty or even horse-faced strangers. We would not put up with a debauched king, but in a democracy all of us are kings, and we praise debauchery as pluralism. This book is of course no condemnation of pluralism; but it is true that art is in one sense fascistic: it claims, on good authority, that some things are healthy for individuals and society and some things are not.
John GardnerPeople 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.
John GardnerTags: writing
Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.
John GardnerTags: writing-art
As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another... Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from 'inspiration' or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect.
John GardnerTags: writing
I should have cracked his skull mid song and sent his blood spraying out wet through the mead hall like a shocking change of key.
John GardnerIt 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 GardnerTags: philosophy
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 GardnerPage 1 of 9.
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