Tao Lin Quotes

I don't think it's more positive to have a Twitter account, a Tumblr, and a blog. Someone without those things will use their time to do other things, like read books or swim or talk to their children or read websites or listen to music or write books or lie in bed or sit in a chair. I don't think any of these things are more positive than any other things. I don't think having an internet presence helps financially.

I don't have any hobbies. You know, I'm very embarrassed when people ask me what are my hobbies; I don't have any hobbies. I mean, it's just enough to keep up with the things I'm trying to solve.

I'm not really about spending every second on social media. I think there's a lot more useful things you can do with your time.

Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you've actually spent in doing it. And then calculate the time you've spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway junctions, swapping dirty stories, and reading the newspapers.

There is nothing in your budget for joy. No books, no flowers, no music, not even a cold beer. And there is nothing in your budget to give away to someone else. We don’t help people who don’t have better values than you do.

If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.

Just as our view of work affects our real experience of it, so too does our view of leisure. If our mindset conceives of free time, hobby time, or family time as non-productive, then we will, in fact, make it a waste of time.

To spend 36 hours or 48 hours of my life binge-watching something seems insane to me.

Not until we have learned to be useful can we afford to do what we like.

Twenty-four hours is never enough for a busy person and way too much for somebody with nothing to do.

I thought I might spend the rest of my time on golf. But thinking about it now, I'm happy playing whenever I have some downtime in my busy schedule, and even if I had all the time I wanted to play, my score probably wouldn't be very good.

Did people waste time before the internet existed?

Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.

I can say that I don't have a lot of leisure time, just sitting around doing absolutely nothing, but that's okay.

GOOD MORNING," said the little prince. "Good Morning," said the salesclerk. This was a salesclerk who sold pills invented to quench thirst. Swallow one a week and you no longer feel any need to drink. "Why do you sell these pills?" "They save so much time," the salesclerk said. "Experts have calculated that you can save fifty-three minutes a week." "And what do you do with those fifty-three minutes?" "Whatever you like." "If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked," the little prince said to himself, "I'd walk very slowly toward a water fountain.

Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon?

I have a job to do, I have a wife and child to take care of. So I don't pay attention to things that I don't know anything about. I've got my own situation to deal with.

just because something is fun doesn't mean it's a waste of time.

When a man's busy, why leisure Strikes him as wonderful pleasure: 'Faith, and at leisure once is he? Straightway he wants to be busy.

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

My process is surprisingly straightforward. I find myself with little to do over a stretch of time and I say, "I should write children's books today." Then I sit down and write a children's book, and if it takes more than, realistically, three hours, I feel like I've done something wrong.

[Children] would have messed up my apartment. In the main, they are ungrateful. They would have siphoned too much time away from the writing of my precious books.

If you're wondering how you'll find time, it means you don't really want to read. Because nobody's ever got time. Children certainly haven't, nor have teenagers or grown-ups. Life always gets in the way. <...> Time to read is always time stolen. <...> Stolen from what? From the tyranny of living.”- p.125

The Only way to do all the things you'd like to do is to read