Gary Jennings Quotes & Sayings

I do not know what she was thinking, but I was remembering the years we have lived together, yet never together, and what a waste they have been
of each other, and of love, which is the most unpardonable waste there is. Love and time, those are the only two things in all the world and all of life that cannot be bought, but only spent. — Gary Jennings

Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always. — Gary Jennings

I'm a writer. I write not only for a living, I write because I'm a writer. — Gary Jennings

Collect adventures and experiences to reminisce about ... go to far places, meet new people, eat exotic foods, enjoy all varieties of women, look on unfamiliar landscapes, see new things. — Gary Jennings

When I was in Thailand, I went into the up-country because Marco Polo didn't get down into the flesh pots of Bangkok because they didn't exist in those days. — Gary Jennings

He also made all Muslims publicly forswear that part of their Holy Quran which permits them to dupe, cheat and kill all who are not of Islam. — Gary Jennings

I write novels, mostly historical ones, and I try hard to keep them accurate as to historical facts, milieu and flavor. — Gary Jennings

I could list hundreds of words I've come up against in the course of my work that did not exist in the era of which I was writing and for which I never could find a suitably old-time, archaic or obsolete substitute. — Gary Jennings

When I got back to Madison Avenue, I realized that copywriters made more than artists, so I switched. — Gary Jennings

When I was living in Mexico and writing a book called 'Aztec,' I had to make a deliberate effort to ignore a lot of the 'typically Mexican landscape' around me - banana and citrus groves, roses and carnations, burros and toros - because they did not exist in Mexico in the 15th century, the time of my book. — Gary Jennings

After the survivor of the Spanish conquest has told his life's story he is convicted by the Inquisition: He posted no brief in defense or mitigation of his offenses, and when he was most solemnly advised by the Court President of the dire consequences he faced if found guilty, Juan Damasceno volunteered only one comment: "It will mean I do not go to the Christian heaven?" He was told that that would indeed be the worst of his punishments: that he would most assuredly not go to Heaven. At which, his smile sent a thrill of horror through every soul of the Court. — Gary Jennings

A man will believe anything that does not cost him anything," said — Gary Jennings

In the 20th century alone, there have been 1,600 books about the circus. My adding one more would be superfluous unless I do something totally new and different. — Gary Jennings

I contend, most seriously, that there is a real need for a good, thick, complete-as-possible dictionary of 'What People Used to Call Things.' — Gary Jennings

To get into Afghanistan, I bribed my way into a camel caravan of smugglers. — Gary Jennings

Everybody has done something about Marco Polo. It's the tiredest, most trite and worked-over subject in the world, and that was why it appealed to me, because I wanted to do something really new and different about something that had been worked over all these centuries, and I think I did. — Gary Jennings

I let no chance go by untaken. I never hesitated to follow where my curiosity beckoned. I willingly went where there was danger in beauty and beauty in danger. I had experiences in plenty. Many were enjoyable, some were instructive, a few I would rather have missed. But I had them, and I have them still in memory. If, as soon as tomorrow, I go to my grave, it will be no black and silent hole. I can paint the darkness with vivid colors, and fill it with music both martial and languorous, with the flicker of swords and the flutter of kisses, with flavors and excitements and sensations, with the fragrance of a field of clover that has been warmed in the sun and then washed by a gentle rain, the sweetest-scented thing God ever put on this earth. Yes, I can enliven eternity. Others may have to endure it; I can enjoy it. — Gary Jennings

I starved and slept on park benches. I wrapped myself in the pages of my manuscript to keep warm. For two and a half years I took odd jobs; nothing was going to deter me. — Gary Jennings

Find a Way or Make a Way — Gary Jennings

The wise man shall pass into strange countries, and good and evil shall he try in all things. — Gary Jennings

If a man is to have a fault, it should be a passionate one, like insatiable curiosity. It would be a pity to be damned for something paltry. — Gary Jennings

The calendar and his glass and the solicitude of his juniors may tell a man that he is old, and he can see for himself that the world and all around him have aged, but secretly he knows that he is still a youth of eighteen or twenty. And what I have said of a man, I have said because a man is what I am. It must be even more true of a woman, to whom youth and beauty and vitality are so much more to be treasured and conserved. — Gary Jennings

I learned to interpret the ancient pictograph codices and read Nahuatl, the Aztec language. — Gary Jennings

That is the hazard in curiosity, I thought: all the certainties fragment and dissolve. A man curious enough and persistent enough might find even the round and solid ball of earth to be not so. He might be less proud of his faculty of reasoning when it left him with nothing whereon to stand. But then again, was not the truth a more solid foundation than illusion? — Gary Jennings