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Top 70 John Gardner Quotes (2025 Update)
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John Gardner Quote: “Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination than only writing about what you know.”

51. “Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination than only writing about what you know.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “The child of the lower or lower middle class is urged in both overt and subtle ways to surpass his background, his well-meaning parents and friends never anticipating that if their dream of upward mobility is realized, the child may adopt the prejudices of the class to which he’s lifted and, with a touch of neurotic distress, may permanently scorn his former life and also, to a certain extent, himself, since the class he’s invaded is unlikely to accept him fully.”

52. “The child of the lower or lower middle class is urged in both overt and subtle ways to surpass his background, his well-meaning parents and friends never anticipating that if their dream of upward mobility is realized, the child may adopt the prejudices of the class to which he’s lifted and, with a touch of neurotic distress, may permanently scorn his former life and also, to a certain extent, himself, since the class he’s invaded is unlikely to accept him fully.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “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.”

53. “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.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “As in the universe every atom has an effect, however miniscule, on every other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of Time and Space at any point is to shake the whole length and breadth of it, so that to change a character’s name from Jane to Cynthia is to make the fictional ground shudder under her feet.”

54. “As in the universe every atom has an effect, however miniscule, on every other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of Time and Space at any point is to shake the whole length and breadth of it, so that to change a character’s name from Jane to Cynthia is to make the fictional ground shudder under her feet.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.”

55. “Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “The trees are dead. The days are an arrow in a dead man’s chest.”

56. “The trees are dead. The days are an arrow in a dead man’s chest.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “Revolution, my dear Prince, is not the substitution of immoral for moral, or of illegitimate for legitimate violence; it is simply the pitting of power against power where the issue is freedom for the winners and enslavement of the rest.”

57. “Revolution, my dear Prince, is not the substitution of immoral for moral, or of illegitimate for legitimate violence; it is simply the pitting of power against power where the issue is freedom for the winners and enslavement of the rest.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “It is this experience of seeing something one has written come alive – literally, not metaphorically, a character or scene daemonically entering the world by its own strange power, so that the writer feels not the creator but only the instrument, or conjurer, the priest who stumbled onto the magic spell – it is this experience of tapping some magic source that makes the writer an addict, willing to give up almost anything for his art, and makes him, if he fails, such a miserable human being.”

58. “It is this experience of seeing something one has written come alive – literally, not metaphorically, a character or scene daemonically entering the world by its own strange power, so that the writer feels not the creator but only the instrument, or conjurer, the priest who stumbled onto the magic spell – it is this experience of tapping some magic source that makes the writer an addict, willing to give up almost anything for his art, and makes him, if he fails, such a miserable human being.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “Across the hidden places of my heart, You search me out; Following the tracery of my daily life So Death can never conquer The secret generations of our souls. The.”

59. “Across the hidden places of my heart, You search me out; Following the tracery of my daily life So Death can never conquer The secret generations of our souls. The.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “The sun backs away from the world like a crab and the days grow shorter, the nights grow longer, more dark and dangerous.”

60. “The sun backs away from the world like a crab and the days grow shorter, the nights grow longer, more dark and dangerous.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “True criticism praises true art for what it does-praises as plainly and comprehensively as possible-and denounces false art for its failure to do art’s proper work. No easy task, the task of the critic, since the trolls are masters of disguise.”

61. “True criticism praises true art for what it does-praises as plainly and comprehensively as possible-and denounces false art for its failure to do art’s proper work. No easy task, the task of the critic, since the trolls are masters of disguise.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “The artist composes, writes, or paints just as he dreams, seizing whatever swims close to his net. This, not the world seen directly, is his raw material.”

62. “The artist composes, writes, or paints just as he dreams, seizing whatever swims close to his net. This, not the world seen directly, is his raw material.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “True art is too complex to reflect the party line.”

63. “True art is too complex to reflect the party line.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “We are rich in schools which speak of how art ‘works’ and avoid the whole subject of what work it ought to do.”

64. “We are rich in schools which speak of how art ‘works’ and avoid the whole subject of what work it ought to do.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy. It is a tragic game, for those who have the wit to take it seriously, because our side must lose; a comic game-or so a troll might say-because only a clown with sawdust brains would take our side and eagerly join in.”

65. “Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy. It is a tragic game, for those who have the wit to take it seriously, because our side must lose; a comic game-or so a troll might say-because only a clown with sawdust brains would take our side and eagerly join in.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “The critic’s proper business is explanation and evaluation, which means he must make use of his analytic powers to translate the concrete to the abstract.”

66. “The critic’s proper business is explanation and evaluation, which means he must make use of his analytic powers to translate the concrete to the abstract.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “All June I bound the rose in sheaves.’ Then.”

67. “All June I bound the rose in sheaves.’ Then.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “The immorality of an inept poet is like that of a sleeping guard or a drunken bus driver.”

68. “The immorality of an inept poet is like that of a sleeping guard or a drunken bus driver.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “Novel-writing is not so much a profession as a yoga, or “way,” an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world. Its benefits are quasi-religious – a changed quality of mind and heart, satisfactions no non-novelist can understand – and its rigors generally bring no profit except to the spirit. For those who are authentically called to the profession, spiritual profits are enough.”

69. “Novel-writing is not so much a profession as a yoga, or “way,” an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world. Its benefits are quasi-religious – a changed quality of mind and heart, satisfactions no non-novelist can understand – and its rigors generally bring no profit except to the spirit. For those who are authentically called to the profession, spiritual profits are enough.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “No one with a distorted view of reality can write good novels, because as we read we measure fictional worlds against the real world. Fiction elaborated out of attitudes we find childish or tiresome in life very soon becomes tiresome.”

70. “No one with a distorted view of reality can write good novels, because as we read we measure fictional worlds against the real world. Fiction elaborated out of attitudes we find childish or tiresome in life very soon becomes tiresome.”

— John Gardner

John Gardner Quote: “If you with your knowledge of present and past recall that a certain man slipped on, say, a banana peel, or fell off his chair, or drowned in a river, that recollection does not mean that you caused him to slip, or fall, or drown. Correct? Of course it’s correct! It happened, and you know it, but knowledge is not cause. Of course! Anyone who argues otherwise is a stupid ignoramus. Well, so with me. My knowledge of the future does not cause the future. It merely sees it.”

71. “If you with your knowledge of present and past recall that a certain man slipped on, say, a banana peel, or fell off his chair, or drowned in a river, that recollection does not mean that you caused him to slip, or fall, or drown. Correct? Of course it’s correct! It happened, and you know it, but knowledge is not cause. Of course! Anyone who argues otherwise is a stupid ignoramus. Well, so with me. My knowledge of the future does not cause the future. It merely sees it.”

— John Gardner

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