Top 70 John Gardner Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.”

— John Gardner

2. “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.”

— John Gardner

Featured in: Reading Quotes

3. “There is no limit to desire but desire’s needs.”

— John Gardner

4. “Poor Grendel’s had an accident. So may you all.”

— John Gardner

5. “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.”

— John Gardner

6. “Find a pile of gold and sit on it.”

— John Gardner

7. “As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn’t do it, don’t.”

— John Gardner

8. “The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.”

— John Gardner

9. “When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.”

— John Gardner

10. “Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.”

— John Gardner

11. “The future is as dark, as unreal, as the past.”

— John Gardner

12. “I cannot believe such monstrous energy of grief can lead to nothing!”

— John Gardner

13. “It was not always like this, of course. On occasion it’s been worse.”

— John Gardner

14. “A true work of fiction does all of the following things, and does them elegantly, efficiently: it creates a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s mind; it is implicitly philosophical; it fulfills or at least deals with all of the expectations it sets up; and it strikes us, in the end, not simply as a thing done but as a shining performance.”

— John Gardner

15. “Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.”

— John Gardner

16. “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

17. “So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.”

— John Gardner

18. “I am mad with joy. – At least I think it’s joy. Strangers have come, and it’s a whole new game. I kiss the ice on the frozen creeks, I press my ear to it, honoring the water that rattles below, for by water they came: the icebergs parted as if gently pushed back by enormous hands, and the ship sailed through, sea-eager, foamy-necked, white sails, riding the swan-road, flying like a bird! O happy Grendel! Fifteen glorious heroes, proud in their battle dress, fat as cows!”

— John Gardner

19. “Talking, talking, spinning a spell, pale skin of words that closes me in like a coffin. Not in a language that anyone any longer understands. Rushing, degenerate mutter of noises I send out before me wherever I creep, like a dragon burning his way through vines and fog.”

— John Gardner

20. “Go 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

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

— John Gardner

22. “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

23. “My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.”

— John Gardner

24. “Do you think it possible for a woman to love two men at the same time?’ ‘A man can love two women, so I see no problem.”

— John Gardner

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

— John Gardner

26. “All systems are evil. All governments are evil. Not just a trifle evil. Monstrously evil.”

— John Gardner

27. “Our noblest hopes grow teeth and pursue us like tigers.”

— John Gardner

28. “The world resists me and I resist the world.”

— John Gardner

29. “What do you call the Hrothgar-wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked?”

— John Gardner

30. “Ultimate wisdom, I have come to perceive, lies in the perception that the solemnity and the grandeur of the universe rise through the slow process of unification in which the diversities of existence are utilized, and nothing, nothing is lost.”

— John Gardner

31. “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

32. “So it goes with me day by day and age by age, I tell myself. Locked in the deadly progression of moon and stars. I shake my head, muttering darkly on shaded paths, holding conversation with the only friend and comfort this world allows, my shadow.”

— John Gardner

33. “But she was beautiful and she surrendered herself with the dignity of a sacrificial virgin. My chest was full of pain, my eyes smarted, and I was afraid – O monstrous trick against reason – I was afraid I was about to sob. I wanted to smash things, bring down the night with my howl of rage. But I kept still. She was beautiful, as innocent as dawn on winter hills. She tore me apart as once the Shaper’s song had done.”

— John Gardner

34. “Why can’t I have someone to talk to?” I said. The stars said nothing.”

— John Gardner

35. “Thus I fled, ridiculous hairy creature torn apart by poetry.”

— John Gardner

36. “Real 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

37. “One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.”

— John Gardner

38. “Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.”

— John Gardner

39. “It enraged me. It was their confidence, maybe – their blissful, swinish ignorance, their bumptious self-satisfaction, and, worst of all, their hope.”

— John Gardner

40. “Another irritant is accidental rhyme, as in the sentence “When the rig blew, everything went flying sky-high – me too.” Notice here that the rhyme is offensive because both rhyme words, “blew” and “too” are stressed positions; that is, the voice comes down hard on them. The rhyme is not offensive, to most ears, if the writer can get one of the rhymes out of stressed position: “The rig blew sky-high, and everything went flying, me too.”

— John Gardner

41. “I wonder which one of us God finds more uninteresting.”

— John Gardner

42. “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

43. “The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.”

— John Gardner

44. “I was younger then. Still playing cat and mouse with the universe.”

— John Gardner

45. “It is the nature of stupid people to hide their perplexity and attack what they cannot grasp.”

— John Gardner

46. “The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus.”

— John Gardner

Featured in: Strong Quotes

47. “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.”

— John Gardner

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

48. “Only very odd people don’t realize that truth-telling is always a relative value.”

— John Gardner

49. “Were they my brothers, my uncles, those creatures shuffling brimstone-eyed from room to room, or sitting separate, isolated, muttering forever like underground rivers, each in his private, inviolable gloom?”

— John Gardner

50. “Art begins in a wound, an imperfection – a wound inherent in the nature of life itself – and is an attempt either to live with the wound or heal it. It is the pain of the wound which impels the artist to do his work, and the universality of woundedness in the human condition which makes the work of art significant as medicine or distraction.”

— John Gardner