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John Gardner Quotes about Art

All John Gardner Quotes Art quotes Reality Writing
What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

John Gardner
Art, Stories, Way
John Gardner, Allan Richard Chavkin (1990). “Conversations with John Gardner”, p.16, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

John Gardner
Art, Reality, Thinking
John Gardner, Stewart O'Nan (1994). “On writers and writing”, Addison-Wesley Longman

To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write [...] so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write [...] so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living. The true artist [...] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful--

John Gardner
Suicide, Art, Pain

Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.

John Gardner
Art, Writing, Waiting

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.

John Gardner
Art, Moving, Home
John Gardner (2010). “The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers”, p.35, Vintage

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