Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partlynatural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, mostof which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity orincivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections);obstinacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal tobelieve what all sensible people know is true); childishness (anapparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondnessfor daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of properrespect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for cryingover nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixationor both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking, smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness andneatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes);remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usualfeature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strangeadmixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness, the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelingsfor or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak ofcunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurableaddiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good. John Gardner
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More Quotes By John Gardner
  1. It would be, for me, mere pointless pleasure, an illusion of order for this one frail, foolish, flicker-flash in the long dull fall of eternity.
  2. This highest kind of truth is never something the artist takes as given. It's not his point of departure but his goal. Though the artist has beliefs, like other people, he realizes that a salient characteristic of art is its radical openness to persuasion. Even...
  3. People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged yourself.
  4. As every writer knows.. there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind...
  5. The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it’s hard. Our culture teaches none of its false lessons more carefully than that one should never be dependent....
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