Sladek Do It Best Quotes & Sayings

People have laughed at all great inventors and discoverers. — John Sladek

Many people are trying to steady themselves by taking tranquilizers. Jesus is the greatest tranquilizer of all. He can straighten out your life and put you back on center. — Billy Graham

Whatever I'm reading at the moment seems to influence whatever I'm writing. — John Sladek

The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive. — John Sladek

The night sky in Egypt is a swirling mass of stars so bright and numerous the sky seems to tremble with the ice-blue weight of them. — Rosemary Mahoney

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

I've recently begun to believe that love is synonymous with madness. It can't possibly be an act of sanity. It is restless and always in pursuit. It will fall from the sky to have what it wants. — Lauren DeStefano

4You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. + 5This is how the holy women of old made themselves beautiful. They put their trust in God and accepted the authority of their husbands. — Anonymous

I usually like whatever I've recently finished best. — John Sladek

An artist's life is supposed to lead toward his masterpiece, not away from it. — John Thomas Sladek

just like peaches," he said, stripping off her panties. "And I love peaches."
-Wrath — J.R. Ward

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

Why should anyone be so grateful for acceptance unless he doubts that he is acceptable, and why should a young, educated and successful couple have such doubts, if not due to the fact that they cannot accept themselves because they are not themselves. — Erich Fromm

So many doors forever. There were never enough. Each door had several locks. One lock was combination. Another required keys. Another was a simple side latch. Another was strictly ornamental. Another you could open by whispering the right thing to it at the right time, which is the type of lock most humans have. — Blake Butler

Believe. The promise of God are real. They are as real, as solid, yes infinitely more solid than this table which the materialist so thoroughly believes in. If you would only believe, O ye of little faith. — George Washington Carver

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

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

When we really look closely, the world of stuff and advertising is not really life. Life is the other stuff. Life is what is left when you take all that crap away, or at least ignore it for a while.
Life is the people who love you. No one will ever choose to stay alive for an iPhone. It's the people we reach via the iPhone that matter.
And once we begin to recover, and to live again, we do so with new eyes. Things become clearer, and we are aware of things we weren't aware of before. — Matt Haig

You might be a redneck if the biggest fashion risk you take is which plaid you'll wear to the 4-H Fair. — Jeff Foxworthy

SF has at least the advantage of not depending on preconceptions. — John Sladek

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read. — John Sladek

In holding your antagonist, therefore, you should hold him lightly as if your arms were nothing but chains which connect you with him, so that you may stretch or contract them at will when necessary, and pull or push him in any direction you choose. If you pull your opponent or apply your tricks on him by putting from the beginning too much strength in your arms, then you are going to contest with him by means of your power and against the principles of Judo. In doing so, you can never expect to succeed in your contest. — Yokoyama Sakujiro

No one is so completely disenchanted with the world, or knows it so thoroughly, or is so utterly disgusted with it, that when it begins to smile upon him he does not become partially reconciled to it. — Giacomo Leopardi

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

Laugh if you will ... They laughed at all great ideas and inventions. They laughed at nitrous oxide. — John Sladek

R-4 got stuck on the First Law. "Can anyone really protect a human being from all harm whatever?" it thought. "No. It is inevitable that all humans must be injured, contract illnesses and ultimately die. The future can only be averted for humans who are already dead. Ergo ... " It took a dozen cops to subdue R-4, after his blood orgy in a department store (83 dead, none injured). — John Sladek

My life has been amazing. How many other ladies of 76 can say that the snapshot on their senior citizen's card was taken by Norman Parkinson? — Carmen Dell'Orefice

In most conventional novels, God is not allowed to be nuts. Nor are nuts allowed to be God. — John Sladek

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

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

All day long, no one is at fault for anything. Whatever faults we see; we see them because of our own defects. — Dada Bhagwan

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

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

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

Le nez de Cle opa" tre: s'il e u" t e te plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait change . Cleopatra'snose: if it had beenshorter the whole face of the earth would have been different. — Blaise Pascal

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

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