# Grendel

- Author: [John Gardner](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner.md)
- Quotes: 39
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel

## Quotes

> "Poor Grendel's had an accident," I whisper. ''"So may you all."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/poor-grendels-had.md)

> Grendel, Grendel! You make the world by whispers, second by second. Are you blind to that? Whether you make it a grave or garden of roses is not the point. Feel the wall: is it not hard? He smashes me against it. Hard, yes! Observe the hardness, write it down in careful runes. Now, sing of walls! Sing!

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/grendel-grendel-you.md)

> Terrible, he whispers. Terrible. He laughs and lets out fire.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/terrible-he-whispers.md)

> “As you see it it is, while the seeing lasts. Time as coffin; dark nightmare history. But where the water was rigid, there will be fish, and men will survive on their flesh until spring. It is coming, my brother. Believe it or not. Though you murder the world, transmogrify life into I and it, strong searching roots will crack your cave and the rains will cleanse it. The world will burn green- sperm build again. By this I kill you.”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/as-you-see.md)

> The Geats build up the fire, prepare to sleep.
>
> And now, silence.
>
> Darkness.
>
> It is time.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/the-geats-build.md)

> I understood at last the look in his eyes. He was insane.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/i-understood-at-last.md)

> "I sing of walls," I howl. "Hooray for the hardness of walls!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/i-sing-of-walls.md)

> What was he? The man had changed the world, had torn up the past by its thick, gnarled roots and had transmuted it, and they, who knew the truth, remembered it his way--and so did me

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/what-was-he-the.md)

> Pity poor Hrothgar,
>
> Grendel's foe!
>
> Pity poor Grendel,
>
> O,O,O!

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/pity-poor-hrothgar.md)

> Nihil ex nihilo, I always say.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/nihil-ex-nihilo.md)

> “You improve them, my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves. The exile, captivity, death they shirk from—the blunt facts of their mortality, their abandonment—that’s what you make them recognize, embrace! You are mankind, or man’s condition: inseparable as the mountain-climber and the mountain.”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/you-improve-them.md)

> Pity poor Grengar,
>
> Hrothdel's foe!
>
> Down goes the whirlpool:
>
> Eek! No, no!

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/pity-poor-grengar.md)

> He closed his eyes, still smiling. "Pick an apocalypse, any apocalypse. A sea of black oil and dead things. No wind. No light. Nothing stirring, not even an ant, a spider. A silent universe. Such is the end of the flicker of time, the brief hot fuse of events and ideas set off, accidentally, and snuffed out, accidentally, by man. Not a real ending of course, nor even a beginning. Mere ripple in Time's stream."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/he-closed-his.md)

> I am mad with joy.--At least I think it's joy.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/i-am-mad.md)

> "Importance is derived from the immanence of infinitude in the finite."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/importance-is-derived.md)

> "Such is life," I said, and mocked a sigh. "Such is dignity."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/such-is-life.md)

> "All systems are evil. All governments are evil. Not just a trifle evil. Monstrously evil."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/all-systems-are.md)

> "I've never seen a live hero before. I thought they were only in poetry. Ah, ah, it must be a terrible burden, though, being a hero--glory reaper, harvester of monsters! Everybody always watching you, weighing you, seeing if you're still heroic. You know how it is--he he! Sooner or later the harvest virgin will make her mistake in the haystack." I laughed.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/ive-never-seen.md)

> The trees are dead. The days are an arrow in a dead man's chest.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/the-trees-are.md)

> "I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly—as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/i-understood-that.md)

> Grendel is crazy,
>
> O,O,O!
>
> Thinks old Hrothgar
>
> Makes it snow!

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/grendel-is-crazy.md)

> O happy Grendel! Fifteen glorious heroes, proud in their battle dress, fat as cows!

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/o-happy-grendel.md)

> All pigs eat cheese.
>
> Old Snaggle is a pig.
>
> If Snaggle is sick and refuses to eat, try cheese.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/all-pigs-eat.md)

> Something is coming, strange as spring. I am afraid.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/something-is-coming.md)

> (Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/talking-talking-spinning.md)

> I am not the only monster on these moors.
>
> I met an old woman as wild as the wind
>
> Striding in white out of midnight's den.
>
> Her cloak was in rags, and her flesh, it was lean,
>
> And her eyes, her murdered eyes...

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/i-am-not.md)

> "He reshapes the world," I whispered, belligerent. "So his name implies. He stares strange-eyed at the mindless world and turns dry sticks to gold."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/he-reshapes-the.md)

> "It is I," I say. "The Destroyer."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/it-is-i-i-say.md)

> (O hear me, rocks and trees, loud waterfalls! You imagine I tell you these thing just to hear myself speak? A little respect there, brothers and sisters!

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/o-hear-me-rocks.md)

> "That night, for the first time, I saw men."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/that-night-for.md)

> I will count my numberless blessings one by one.
>
> I. My teeth are sound.
>
> I. The roof of my cave is sound.
>
> I. I have not committed the ultimate act of nihilism: I have not killed the queen.
>
> I. Yet.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/i-will-count.md)

> And so begins the twelfth year of my idiotic war. The pain of it! The stupidity!

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/and-so-begins.md)

> “Nevertheless, something will come of all this,” I said.
>
> “Nothing,” he said. “A brief pulsation in the black hole of eternity. My advice to you—”
>
> “Wait and see,” I said.
>
> He shook his head. “My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.”

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/nevertheless-something-will.md)

> Tedium is the worst pain.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/tedium-is-the.md)

> "Hey!" he yelled. A forgivable lapse.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/hey-he-yelled.md)

> "Personally," he said, "my great ambition is to count all this," --he waved vaguely at the treasure around him--"and possibly sort it into piles."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/personally-he-said.md)

> "The Shaper may yet improve men's minds, bring peace to the miserable Danes." But they were doomed, I knew, and I was glad. No denying it. Let them wander the fogroads of Hell.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/the-shaper-may.md)

> "If you want me to help you destroy a government, I'm here to serve. But as for Universal Justice--" He laughed.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/if-you-want.md)

> His voice, though powerful, was mild. Voice of a dead thing, calm as dry sticks and ice when the wind blows over them. He had a strange face that, little by litte, grew unsettling to me: it was a face, or so it seemed for an instant, from a dream I had almost forgotten. The eyes slanted downward, never blinking, unfeeling as a snake's. He had no more beard than a fish. He smiled as he spoke, but it was as if the gentle voice, the childlike yet faintly ironic smile were holding something back, some magician-power that could blast stone cliffs to ashes as lighting blasts trees.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/his-voice-though.md)