John Gardner Quotes

There's horror in your life, believe me, whether it's coming, or you've just been lucky to miss it today.

The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

I've had two unlucky injuries that are the equivalent of walking under 1,000 ladders and seeing 1,000 black cats.

The nature of tragedy and accident is that we cannot predict.

Nobody is impervious to misfortune.

Decay is quiet but ghastly, explosion is dramatic and dreadful. There's not much to choose between the two of them in reality, and most of our lives have sufficient of both.

Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it's not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it's not your fault.

If we do not, it will end in bloodshed ... most probably.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes.

Don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.

He's not going to shoot us in the back by accident, is he?" Deputy Coltrain asked. I smiled, not sweetly. "He promised not to.

CALAMITY, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Liadan," he said, staring intently at the ground. "Yes," I whispered. "Don't wed that man Eamonn. Tell him, if he takes you, he's a dead." --Bran

As for you, Private, if you mention a word of this to anyone, I'll feed you to the cat thing here. Understand?" "Yum," said Mogget. "Yes, sir!" mumbled the telephone operator, his hands shaking as he tried to smother the burning wreckage of his switchboard with a fire blanket.

You will fail. Then they will kill you." - Vandara to Kira, following Kira's trial.

Good luck tended to avoid me.

It's hard to believe, but anything can happen. Accidents do happen, unfortunately, it happened at the worst time.

Prosperity often presages adversity.

Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt.

Misfortune wandering the same track lights now upon one and now upon another.

Trouble seems to follow me around, waiting to club me with a tire iron.

Trouble follows you like a shadow, Gillian. You're prone to injuries. I swear to God, if a tree decided to fall right now, it would find your head to land on." "Oh, for heaven's sake," she muttered. "I'll admit that I have had a run of bad fortune, but—" He wouldn't let her continue. "A run of bad fortune? Since I've known you, you've been beaten, stabbed and now shot with an arrow. If this keeps up, you'll be dead in another month

I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.

Tell me what it is, or prepare to eat harpoon.