John Gardner

“In Pro-fiction, the author is in charge.”

“All systems are evil. All governments are evil. Not just a statement of anarchist policy, but a observable fact.”

“The business of the poet is not to say what is true, but to make it true.”

“Grendel's law: There is no limit to desire but desire's needs.”

“We must not be ashamed of the things that make us human, in fact, this is the only reason to be proud.”

“The first and most important rule of thumb for any storyteller is, 'Show, don't tell.'”

“Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.”

“What the writer has to sell is not the subject matter but his unique way of seeing it.”

“Art is a way of thinking, a way of living.”

“Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown... It is the result of a process of trying and failing, of seeing and revising.”

“Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy.”

“True art is by its nature moral.”

“The past is a dream, the future a mystery. All we have is now.”

“That's what's wrong with the world. No one's careful. No one's trying to be good.”

“Bad art is always basically creepy; that is its first and most obvious sign.”

“Art begins in a wound or a flaw.”

“Art asserts and reasserts the value of the individual.”