John Gardner Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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Reading the several thousand pages of Christopher Isherwood's complete journals is an instructive corrective to the prissiness of reading fiction. Isherwood had faults that we'd say were unforgiveable in a novel (he was careful to distance himself from these in his autobiographical fiction).
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The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
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We often feel a twinge of guilt over our own fascination with presidential candidates' wives - as if we are secretly reading the 'Star' for our campaign information instead of the policy journals.
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If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
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We must not forget that chemical warfare will sooner or later bring in its wake bacteriological warfare, pest propagation, typhus and other serious diseases.
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I still think reading something like 'Ulysses' takes a tremendous investment of time, but it repays all of it with so much interest.
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Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.
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I certainly gained a lot by reading about Shanghai.
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I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.
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Don't ever forget two things I'm going to tell you. One, don't believe everything that's written about you. Two, don't pick up too many checks.
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No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew her, will remember her.
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When you're first reading the script and thinking about playing the part, it's slightly daunting. It's easy to question, 'Is an audience going to like me? And is that my job?'
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The spark for 'In Praise of Slowness' came when I began reading to my children. Every parent knows that kids like their bedtime stories read at a gentle, meandering pace. But I used to be too fast to slow down with the Brothers Grimm. I would zoom through the classic fairy tales, skipping lines, paragraphs, whole pages.
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If you write any kind of fiction about America, you immediately have to start doing some research about guns, so in some ways, 'Gun Machine' is just the culmination of 20 years of reading about guns.
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Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
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Do not forget that the Arab countries, starting with Algeria and Egypt, are the ones that have paid the heaviest toll because of Islamic terror.
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I'll often get obsessed with something for about three days, and I'll be utterly into it, and I'll read every single thing about it possible. And then three days later, I'll just forget about it, and I'll be onto something else.
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The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.
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Reading Epictetus, I realized that most of the pain in my life came not from any actual privations or insults but, rather, from the shame of thinking that they could have been avoided.
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Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.
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I have observed, on board a steamer, how men and women easily give way to their instinct for flirtation, because water has the power of washing away our sense of responsibility, and those who on land resemble the oak in their firmness behave like floating seaweed when on the sea.
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What is inconceivable about the universe is that it is at all conceivable.
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Discrimination and prejudice of any kind have no place in sports or in our society.
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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.
