# Quote — John Gardner, Grendel

> “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.”

- Author: [John Gardner](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner.md)
- Book: [Grendel](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grendel#Chapter_Five) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-gardner/grendel/you-improve-them

## More from this book

> "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)