Clifford Stoll Quotes

I'm one of those people who doesn't understand how it was that I went to bed at 3 o'clock in the morning or what I was doing. Like, I looked at 'Bon Appetit' magazine for three hours for things I'm never going to cook. Or I'm just on Pinterest for no logical reason.

I think, for the rest of my life, I shall refrain from looking up things. It is the most ravenous time-snatcher I know. You pull one book from the shelf, which carries a hint or a reference that sends you posthaste to another book, and that to successive others. It is incredible, the number of books you hopefully open and disappointedly close, only to take down another with the same result.

There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.

What is it about the blank page that makes me want to hurl myself into a game of solitaire? I ask myself these kinds of questions while I'm playing solitaire.

I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.

When I'm on the couch, I usually have the TV on and my MacBook Air nearby. And sometimes, when my ADD is really kicking in, I have my iPad too. And my iPhone. And a magazine that I haven't gotten to. And a book under the pillow to my left.

It frustrates me when my mind wanders and when I end up reading the same words again and again.

I get sidetracked very easily.

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

Too much research can be the writer's enemy. You can spend days on end in the British Library or prowling the streets with a Dictaphone, and it's easy to convince yourself that you're working hard. Often, it can be an excuse not to work; a classic displacement activity.

The problem with binge-watching on Netflix is that you lose three days of your life.

I really could've been a good student, but I was always hearing an imaginary audience.

Mostly, I just waste my time.

I spend much too much time on the Web with e-mail and surfing and reading my key sites, and a whole day can go by, and you wonder, 'What did I do today?'

Anyone can sit down and write two pages of a novel, then forget about it, and a week later write five pages of a screenplay, then forget about it, and a week later start another novel... etc, etc.

I'm the kind of person who will set time aside to do something and then do everything but that thing.

My biggest hurdle usually has to do with concentration. I have a tendency to kind of start working on something, and then, all of a sudden, I'll totally divert and do something totally different.

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.

She probably gave up and started playing Minesweeper." [...] We reached the cafe and found Sydney bent over her laptop, with a barely eaten Danish and what was probably her fourth cup of coffee. We slid into seats beside her. "How's it—hey! You ARE playing Minesweeper!

I think the internet is the greatest waste of time since masturbation was discovered.

Now...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.

There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.

Procrastination is still the thief of time.

Keen at the start, but careless at the end.