John Gardner

“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.”

“When I was a child I truly loved:Unthinking love as calm and deepAs the North Sea. But I have lived,And now I do not sleep.”

“He 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...”

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

“The writer's characters must stand before us with a wonderful clarity, such continuous clarity that nothing they do strikes us as improbable behavior for just that character, even when the character's action is, as sometimes happens, something that came as a surprise to the writer himself. We must understand, and the writer before us must understand, more than we know about the character; otherwise neither the writer nor the reader after him could feel confident of the character's behavior when the character acts freely.”

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

“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.”

“The people I've known who wanted to become writers, knowing what it meant, did become writers.”

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

“The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it’s hard. Our culture teaches none of its false lessons more carefully than that one should never be dependent. Hence the novice or still unsuccessful writer, who has enough trouble believing in himself, has the added burden of shame. It’s hard to be a good writer and a guilty person; a lack of self-respect creeps into one’s prose.”

“The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot.”

“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.”

“The instruction here is not for every kind of writer - not for the writer of nurse books or thrillers or porno or the cheaper sort of sci-fi - though it is true that what holds for the most serious kind of fiction will generally hold for junk fiction as well. (Not everyone is capable of writing junk fiction: It requires an authentic junk mind. Most creative-writing teachers have had the experience of occasionally helping to produce, by accident, a pornographer. The most elegant techniques in the world, filtered through a junk mind, become elegant junk techniques.)”

“As in the universe every atom has an effect, however minuscule, 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 in fiction every element has effect on every other, so that to change a character's name from Jane to Cynthia is to make the fictional ground shudder under her feet.”

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

“We human beings glimpse lofty ideals, catch ourselves betraying them, and sink to suicidal despair--despair from which only the love of our friends can save us, since friends see in us those nobler qualities we ourselves, out of long familiarity, have forgotten we possess. That, of course, is why the suicidal person is difficult around his friends.”

“True art is by nature moral. We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for and analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force, it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach. It clarifies, like an experiment in a chemistry lab, and confirms. As a chemist's experiment tests the laws of nature and dramatically reveals the truth or falsity of scientific hypotheses, moral art tests valyes and rouses trustworthy feelings about the better and the worse in human action.”

“Theoretically there's no reason one should get [writer's block], if one understands that writing, after all, is only writing, neither something one ought to feel deeply guilty about nor something one ought to be inordinately proud of.”

“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.”

“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.”