Quotes from John Gardner

One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.

God be kind to all good Samaritans and also bad ones. For such is the kingdom of heaven.

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

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.

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.

One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time, incompetent or crazy.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

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

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

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

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.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

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

There is no limit to desire but desire's needs.

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.