Frederik Pohl Quotes

We were born and we die. In between, I think we try to live as best we can.

There is no shortcut to life. To the end of our days, life is a lesson imperfectly learned.

One can't change one's life experience, but even if I could, I wouldn't change it because of all the wonderful things that have happened to me.

Life is an aggregate of experience, which continually surprises us.

In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.

They that have lived a single day have lived an age.

It's taken me longer still to realize what a short span there is between those life experiences and the rest of your life. That's a job for the people who lived through it.

I am so enriched because so much has happened in my life. The way I can express myself is because of the life I have led. It's only when you experience life can you emote it.

I also believe that writing becomes worthwhile and vitalized only through a full and exciting life.

Everything that happens to me in my life, be it good or bad, it's all education, and it's important for that to become part of what you do. It all feeds the beast.

Life is a succession of lessons enforced by immediate reward, or, oftener, by immediate chastisement.

Just live life. That's the best way to learn how to act. Just live.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

You learn from things that you experience in life. I'd never want to say that I regret anything or that anything was a mistake. Honestly, that isn't how I have chosen to live my life.

I think anything that increases your understanding of the human condition... I think age and life, if you're lucky, makes you think deeper, and the other thing it makes you realize is that you never stop learning, and you never lose your fear of getting it wrong.

What is life about? Two things: love and death.

I think that the older I get, the more I play, you realise when it's your time.

I've learned a lot. I've seen a lot. I've grown a lot.

I had to have experience, you know what I mean? Because I've been doing this since I was 14... I couldn't write about anything at 14. I had to live some life. I definitely lived some life.

If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.

It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.

I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie.

I think the only reason I wanted to do modeling, really, was because I knew I wasn't ready to act; I knew I didn't have enough life experience, and I knew that doing photo shoots was a way of acting. Playing a character each shoot and being able to just emerge yourself in these awkward experiences - it was amazing.

It has been an interesting road, but I wouldn't trade any of it for the world, because I feel like all of those instances in my life I felt molded me and strengthened me and made me who I am.

Death is an absolute mystery. We are all vulnerable to it, it's what makes life interesting and suspenseful.