John Sladek Quotes

I'm a known reader. That's what I do with my time.

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

When I started earning money from screen-writing, for a long time my only indulgences were books.

I'm obsessed with TV. How wrong our parents were when they said we should only watch an hour a day. Stop wasting your time reading books.

For the moment, whenever I read, it is normally scripts. You start a book and then you think, 'I should be reading these five scripts.'

I feel like if I'm going to take time reading, I better be learning.

Everything one reads is nourishment of some sort - good food or junk food - and one assumes it all goes in and has its way with your brain cells.

I think it's so important to feed your brain you know. Sometimes you've just got to read.

So I grew up in a very book-friendly environment and my education as a writer was reading. I think that's the best education. Reading, and taking from the people I admired.

Working on 'Raising Hope' is a very hurry-up-and-wait activity, and I just always liked the idea of being as productive as I can be. I write because I don't just want that time to dissolve, where I'm sitting in a trailer staring blankly at the paintings of moccasins that came with the trailer.

I love to read, and I love to write. I love to read. You have no idea how many books I have.

Writing for Mills and Boon taught me a lot of discipline. You have to produce books in a short time scale and four a year, and it teaches you a lot.

I don't think I've ever read poetry, ever. I'm not really book-smart.

I could read at a very early age and I loved stories, losing myself in stories, novels.

I've always felt that writing can be learned but not really taught. The best thing somebody can do for you is to put the right book in your hands at the right time. I grew up in a family where the right book was always being put in my hands.

As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise.

I've actually not read any books on time management.

I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me.

The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.

Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns.

I would like to read some books: I don't have time; I would like to continue working on my autobiography.

Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.

You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff.

You learn to write by reading, and my experiences and tastes as a reader are pretty wide.

I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands.