Within a single scene, it seems to be unwise to have access to the inner reflections of more than one character. The reader generally needs a single character as the means of perception, as the character to whom the events are happening, as the character with whom he is to empathize in order to have the events of the writing happen to him.
John CiardiTell me how much a nation knows about its own language, and I will tell you how much that nation knows about its own identity.
John CiardiModern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
John CiardiNothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.
John CiardiConviction is possible only in a world more primitive than ours can be perceived to be. A man can achieve a simply gnomic conviction only by ignoring the radical describers of his environment, or by hating them, as convinced men have hated, say, Darwin and Freud, as agents of some devil.
John CiardiI'm smiled out, talked out, quipped out, socialized so far from any being, I need the weight of mortal silences to get realized back into myself.
John CiardiA university is a reading and discussion club. If students knew how to use the library, they wouldn't need the rest of the buildings. The faculty's job, in great part, is to teach students how to use a library in a living way. All a student should really need is access to the library and a place to sleep.
John CiardiI have one head that wants to be good, And one that wants to be bad. And always, as soon as I get up, One of my heads is sad.
John CiardiTo read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.
John CiardiThe success of the poem is determined not by how much the poet felt in writing it, but by how much the reader feels in reading it.
John CiardiEvery parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
John CiardiWho could believe an ant in theory? A giraffe in blueprint? Ten thousand doctors of what's possible Could reason half the jungle out of being.
John CiardiA good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
John CiardiLove is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.
John CiardiIt is easy enough to praise men for the courage of their conviction. I wish I could teach the sad young of this mealy generation the courage of their convictions.
John CiardiA savage is simply a human organism that has not received enough news from the human race.
John CiardiWhat has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.
John CiardiA carbonated wine foisted upon Americans (who else would drink it?) by winery ad agencies as a way of getting rid of inferior champagne by mixing it with inferior burgundy.
John CiardiThe constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
John Ciardi