The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.
John GardnerTalking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.
John GardnerWe 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.
John GardnerThe image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.
John Gardneri understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. i understood that, finally and absolutely, i alone exist. all the rest, i saw, is merely what pushes me, or what i push against, blindly - as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. i create the whole universe, blink by blink.
John Gardner