John Sladek Quotes

#1. Doubt is part of searching. Same as faith.

Gayle Forman

#2. Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.

Alan Moore

#3. As the semantic engineer, your job is naming the parts and tightening nuts and bolts. I suggest you get back to your office and do that - right now!

John Sladek

#4. Laugh if you will ... They laughed at all great ideas and inventions. They laughed at nitrous oxide.

John Sladek

#5. This is mainly because I spend a lot of time writing and so don't have much time to read; I hate to waste that time reading what may turn out to be junk food for the mind, when there's so much real writing to be read.

John Sladek

#6. In most conventional novels, God is not allowed to be nuts. Nor are nuts allowed to be God.

John Sladek

#7. Whatever I'm reading at the moment seems to influence whatever I'm writing.

John Sladek

#8. See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.

John Sladek

#9. Every morning, I crawl out of bed. I sit there and think, 'Do I really need this?' And I drag myself to the gym in my garage. It's not fun. I hate it. I work out alone. Weights.

Sylvester Stallone

#10. You look beautiful and fuckable. I want you so badly it hurts. I'm dangerously close to taking you back to the couch and making you come 'til you beg me to stop.

Sylvia Day

#11. I think these days an SF connection would be a boost to other books; I'm sure more people have read my two little detective puzzles because of the SF connection.

John Sladek

#12. Anything can happen in SF. And the fact that nothing ever does happen in SF is only due to the poverty of our imaginations, we who write it or edit it or read it. But SF can in principle deal with anything.

John Sladek

#13. An artist's life is supposed to lead toward his masterpiece, not away from it.

John Thomas Sladek

#14. Matter is thought, and thought is matter. Nothing exists that cannot be synthesized.

David Mitchell

#15. Kinsey kick started a lot in shocking people with how much homosexual activity there is.

Bill Condon

#16. Joe Frazier is so ugly that when he cries, the tears turn around and go down the back of his head.

Muhammad Ali

#17. People have laughed at all great inventors and discoverers.

John Sladek

#18. SF has at least the advantage of not depending on preconceptions.

John Sladek

#19. I usually like whatever I've recently finished best.

John Sladek

#20. Today, clean our hearts of any emotional poison that we have, free our minds from any judgment so that we can live in complete peace and complete love.

Miguel Ruiz

#21. I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.

John Sladek

#22. Love is the force that keeps every part of our lives in property alignment.

Toni Sorenson

#23. You. Are. Amazing. Meg, I love a woman who looks like a woman. I don't want to be worried that I'll snap you in half, and when I lay on your stomach, I don't want your ribs poking me in the face.

Kristen Proby

#24. We didn't have a phone when I was a kid, and I was too shy to smash any public phones, and our town didn't have a pool hall either, so I had to hang out at the public library - and anyway, I told myself stories.

John Sladek

#25. To my mind, the best SF addresses itself to problems of the here and now, or even to problems which have never been solved and never will be solved - I'm thinking of Philip K. Dick's work here, dealing with questions of reality, for example.

John Sladek

#26. I started writing, or rather, thinking, stories as a child, and at that time the reason was very clear.

John Sladek

#27. sometimes I feel my heart fall to vague depths between words
there are such spaces that I can't help but feel my heart fall between the pregnant pause of all you will not say
and all i can not ask

Jewel

#28. Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few simple instructions such as 'go left', 'go right', and 'build car'.

John Thomas Sladek

#29. The problem and privilege we all have is being alive in this century and able to read this language. It makes any list meaningless except the list of an illiterate.

John Sladek

#30. Most publishers seem very reluctant to publish short story collections at all; they bring them out in paperback, often disguised as novels.

John Sladek

#31. Most people think happiness comes from experiences in the world. The fulfillment of desire causes a type of happiness. But as soon as they experience passes, the happiness passes.

Frederick Lenz

#32. The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive.

John Sladek

#33. I have a kind of standard explanation why, which goes like this: Science fiction is one way of making sense out of a senseless world.

John Sladek

#34. The night you gave me my birthday party ... you were a young Lieutenant and I was a fragrant phantom, wasn't I? And it was a radiant night, a night of soft conspiracy and the trees agreed that it was all going to be for the best.

Zelda Fitzgerald