Austin Kleon
“It’s very difficult to be very lazy. It takes a lot of imagination to do nothing and you have to be sufficiently self-confident not to have a bad conscience. You have to have a taste for life, so that every minute is complete in itself and so you don’t have to keep saying ‘I’ve done this or that.’ You need strong nerves to do nothing. Being lazy also means that other people’s opinions don’t matter. Nor does the idea of always having to prove yourself.”
—Françoise Sagan“I’m a really lazy bitch, but I have a punitive superego. The two go together.”
—Colson Whitehead“I’m pretty lazy, but I’m very disciplined.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib“Self employment, for me at least, is a never-ending contest between the world’s worst manager and the world’s laziest employee.”
—Daniel Akst“Nobody really cares whether you do it or not. You have to make yourself do it. I’m very lazy and I suffer as a result. Of course, when it’s going well there’s nothing in the world like it. But it’s also very lonely. If you do something you’re really pleased with, you’re in the crazy position of being exhilarated all by yourself.”
—Robert Stone“Now relieved of the financial need to write a line for 10 years, I may discover abysses of laziness within myself and do just that.”
—John Updike, letter“To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. The book-learning gradually dribbles away; problems melt and dissolve; ties are gently severed; thinking, when you deign to indulge in it, becomes very primitive; the body becomes a new and wonderful instrument; you look at plants or stones or fish with different eyes; you wonder what people are struggling to accomplish by their frenzied activities; you know there is a war on but you haven’t the faintest idea what it’s about or why people should enjoy killing one another!”
—Henry Miller
Happy Friday. Let’s get lazy.