Grendel By John Gardner Quotes & Sayings

They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.
'Poor Grendel's had an accident,' I whisper. 'So may you all. — John Gardner

I first met Taylor Swift at an awards show, which is a pretty easy place to suss out who is cool. Right off the bat I was like, This is a person I want to know. Just because she's a very famous person doesn't mean she doesn't exist outside of that space. She's wonderful and special and treats me really nicely and we have a great, mature relationship. She's on a short list of people like that for me. — Jack Antonoff

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the "right" side and therefore will win. Right makes might. — Ursula K. Le Guin

As a mother love cherish and carry her baby within her womb,
as do i love cherish and carry my baby named God within my heart,
for all eternity. — Faruk H.T.

In order to cure a feeling of malaise, you have to throw light on it. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them. — James Laughlin

My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it. — John Gardner

I am mad with joy.
At least I think it's joy. Strangers have come, and it's a whole new game. I kiss the ice on the frozen creeks, I press my ear to it, honoring the water that rattles below, for by water they came: the icebergs parted as if gently pushed back by enormous hands, and the ship sailed through, sea-eager, foamy-necked, white sails, riding the swan-road, flying like a bird! O happy Grendel! Fifteen glorious heroes, proud in their battle dress, fat as cows! — John Gardner

Get out. Get out NOW! — J. David Cox

When Peter made mistakes, Wendy cheered for him anyway. One afternoon he beat her and everyone else in a race organized by Slightly. She only laughed and squeezed his wrist with easy affection and told him how fast he was. She was so undeterred by losing that it made the boys wonder if winning was exactly what they'd thought it was or if in England it was different. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

There are still psychologists who, in a basic misunderstanding, think that gestalt theory tends to underestimate the role of past experience. Gestalt theory tries to differentiate between and-summative aggregates, on the one hand, and gestalten, structures, on the other, both in sub-wholes and in the total field, and to develop appropriate scientific tools for investigating the latter. — Max Wertheimer

Thomas opened the throttle all the way and passed me, I kid you not, a shiny brass telescope.
"Seriously?" I asked him.
"Ever since those pirate movies came out, they're everywhere," he said. "I've got a sextant, too."
"Any tent you have is a sex tent," I muttered darkly, extending the telescope.
Thomas smirked. — Jim Butcher

It's not easy to kill a mountain goat. He thinks with his spine. — John Gardner

I am not going to make any commitments to the teachers union to do anything until they do something that's other than in their own self- interest. And everything they have done so far is in their self-interests, and that's it. — Chris Christie

Stars, spattered out through lifeless night from end to end, like jewels scattered in a dead king's grave, tease, torment my wits toward meaningful patterns that do not exist. — John Gardner

People buy pathetic substitutes for community - sound waves in a speaker, particles bombarding a screen - all pretending to be friends or the folks next door. The vacuum they leave when the screen goes dark, when the recording ends, is filled with a loneliness worse than ever before." "What's the answer?" "Flesh and blood touching flesh and blood. Life touching life. Yours, mine, everybody's. — Tony Hendra

Here was the worst curse: he managed to force the dream from his conscious mind often enough that when it returned to him (opening the pantry door, say, recalling the sweep of floodwater), the experience of it became fresh and bleeding once more. — Anthony Doerr

I'm not a genius. I'm just passionately curious. — Albert Einstein

When you love something, you have to make sure it loves you back, or you'll bring about no end of trouble chasing it. — Patrick Rothfuss

Find a pile of gold and sit on it. — John Gardner

Poor Grendel's had an accident. So may you all. — John Gardner

I had a chance. I knew I had no more than that. it's all a hero asks for. — John Gardner

I have left out what I don't remember or don't know. Temperament, fear, shyness, obedience, kindness. — Gerald Stern