John Gardner Quotes
In university courses we do exercises. Term papers, quizzes, final examinations are not meant for publication. We move through a course on Dostoevsky or Poe as we move through a mildly good cocktail party, picking up the good bits of food or conversation, bearing with the rest, going home when it comes to seem the reasonable thing to do. Art, at those moments when it feels most like art -- when we feel most alive, most alert, most triumphant -- is less like a cocktail party than a tank full of sharks.
Quotes to Explore
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We're spirited and spiritual... and fun follows us around.
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Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.
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To me, doing a gay pride show is one of the most fun things. My first show that paid more than $10,000 was in a gay club on New Year's Eve in San Francisco.
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Customers want new things, and the way that they get them isn't written in stone.
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All my life, my immediate response to emotional pain has been to make jokes. Lots of jokes.
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Just as water is a key ingredient to growth on the farm, capital is required for businesses to thrive.
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I suffer the mortification of seeing myself attacked right and left by people at home professing patriotism and love of country who never heard the whistle of a hostile bullet. I pity them and the nation dependent on such for its existence. I am thankful, however that, though such people make a great noise, the masses are not like them.
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Here in France, I've seen some very good young designers, but they don't have this ability to be good businessmen, too. I think America gives you this.
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Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
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I don't think there is much American music.
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I am just getting into Zora Neale Hurston, who is possibly a much better writer than the critics and rivals who tried to erase her from history, resulting in a life in which she worked as a maid and died in a welfare nursing home. She's clever. She does something modern to the sentence.
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The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.
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The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.
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I probably follow all sports a little bit. I like hockey quite a bit. I like football. I like college basketball when it gets down to March Madness. I like baseball. I enjoy them all. I watch them all.
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The pianist Cecil Taylor is extremely melodic; the guitarist Derek Bailey is extremely melodic, and Ornette Coleman.
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What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons.
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The best V-Day gift I've ever received was a personalized photo collage.
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Whatever I have done so far has led me to 'Kaabil.' It is a big opportunity for me to establish myself more commercially. It is a huge platform.
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Growing up I played piano and I sang at a lot of weddings; I grew up in a very small town, a little coal-mining town in Virginia called Grundy. And my family was very sing-songy at home.
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The natural law of inertia: Matter will remain at rest or continue in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.
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Some times you lose more than you win. It's about handling losses and trying to turn them into positives. You get out into the big leagues and there's a period of adjustment to be made. You've got to handle it.
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For more than a quarter of a century on active duty, my house has been my tent, and my home the battlefield.
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In university courses we do exercises. Term papers, quizzes, final examinations are not meant for publication. We move through a course on Dostoevsky or Poe as we move through a mildly good cocktail party, picking up the good bits of food or conversation, bearing with the rest, going home when it comes to seem the reasonable thing to do. Art, at those moments when it feels most like art -- when we feel most alive, most alert, most triumphant -- is less like a cocktail party than a tank full of sharks.
