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John Gardner

13 quotesEssayist · United States Of America · Male

All first lines of books (3)Music (2)Relationships (2)Best Reading Quotes (1)Night (1)Our Existential Physics (1)Ideals (1)Fatalism (1)Meaning (1)Skies (1)Binghamton (1)Art (1)Novels (1)Nature's Apathy (1)First Line of Books (1)

From “Mickelsson's Ghosts”

Sometimes the sordidness of his present existence, not to mention the stifling, clammy heat of the apartment his finances had forced him to take, on the third floor of an ugly old house on Binghamton’s West Side—‘ the nice part of town,’ everybody said (God have mercy on those who had to live in the…

Binghamton first lines of books

Her face was like a child's, not yet touched by the shadow of family deaths. Behind her there was a white, Spanish-looking building, large, spear-shaped fronds, and a wide, bright expanse of water. Sunlight fell everywhere, not least (one felt) in the young woman's heart. He had never seen anyone…

Aging Lost Time Love History of Faces

The painful realization came that he did not feel as guilty even about the murder as he felt about his betrayal of his calling.

Conviction Vocation

If music was studied, recreated or now-first-expressed emotion, why was he listening with such strained intensity, as if to learn some answer, solve some important life-riddle? Wasn't it the case, in fact, that he'd been listening all this while for the wrong thing entirely; that music— for that…

Art Liberal Arts Meaning Music

It even crossed his mind, as he stood idly waiting, his hand resting on the wallpaper books, that maybe he ought to get a rifle. Why not? His father had taken him hunting as a boy; the memory rose in his mind with wonderful vividness— creeks, trees, sunlight, squirrels scampering along high, leafy…

Relationships Slowly Dying

The question is whether the Ideal exists in actuality or only in our clumsy, moment-by-moment emotions— continually shifting potential; in other words 'out there' or 'in here' or both: God's voice, so to speak, or the opinion, on a particular Tuesday, of some human— or both at once. Am I leaving…

Idealism Ideals

When they had fights about Ellen's playing around— a phrase that, inexplicably, filled him with rage— it always seemed later that it was not her infidelity that brought on the fights, nor his guilt at his own unconfessed infidelity, but the gin they'd drunk. It had seemed not in the real world, as…

Relationships

He'd never in his life heard music so unearthly. Perhaps it was the shale of the mountainsides, or the breath of cold fog on the river; whatever the reason, the music, by the time it reached Mickelsson, seemed nothing that human voices could conceivably produce. If stones were to sing, taking their…

Music Theology Perfect Music

From “Grendel”

The old ram stands looking down over rockslides, stupidly triumphant.

First Line of Books first lines of books You Thought You Won But You Actually Lost

Locked in the deadly progression of moon and stars.

Fatalism Our Existential Physics

The cold night air is reality at last: indifferent to me as a stone face carved on a high cliff wall to show that the world is abandoned.

Nature's Apathy Night

From “JASON AND MEDEIA”

I dreamed I awakened in a valley where no life stirred, no cry of a fox sparked up out of stillness; a night of ashes.

first lines of books Dreaming Skies Ashes World of Ashes

From “On Becoming A Novelist”

We 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.

Books Novels Imagination Best Reading Quotes Words Become Images

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