John Gardner Quotes

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

Nonfiction is both easier and harder to write than fiction. It's easier because the facts are already laid out before you, and there is already a narrative arc. What makes it harder is that you are not free to use your imagination and creativity to fill in any missing gaps within the story.

I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.

I sometimes wonder why I do so much research - I look at other successful writers, and I think it must just be so relaxing to write about flying horses or something, but I have to make it plausible.

The possibilities are infinite with new writing; every time you open a new script, there's no limit to what it might contain.

I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen.

I get to do what I love every day. I get to crawl into someone else's head and I love that.

Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.

I don't believe in writer's block.

Now, as a writer, the whole world is your nail polish display, and what's more, you can help yourself. A thrilling, colourful array of gorgeous human peculiarity revolves before your eyes, and you still can't quite believe it's all yours for the taking.

Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess.

When you're a writer and you're an adult, that's something you crave - that limitless imagination and love for worlds that don't exist that you can create.

I usually say I write for the smartest, cleverest, wittiest audience I know, and that's me.

It might be more difficult because you haven't got a book or a prop, but for the most part I like to write unpaid... initially and my own stories.

I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one.

Science fiction is not about the freedom of imagination. It's about a free imagination pinched and howling in a vise that other people call real life.

Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.

Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction; the imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously.

Our minds simply don't function in some sort of narrative chronology. I think that one of the great gifts of writing fiction is being able to think about that.

A non-event ... is better to write about than an event, because with a non-event you can make up the meaning yourself, it means whatever you say it means.

I never get sick of writing my own stories because there's a certain comfort in knowing you will never run out of material. It's relaxing, actually, to write.

The best I do, if I'm just playing around and riffing in a fantasy world, and then I'll write something down. Hopefully I write it down.

When I was a kid I loved to read, but I didn't write and I didn't create imaginary worlds. So, if one student walks away thinking, "She's obviously just an ordinary person, yet she gets to make her living doing what she wants to do. Maybe that applies to me, too," then I feel like my time has been well spent.