Jim Gaffigan Quotes

I feel guilty just sitting around when I know I can be doing something.

That's the rational premise behind my spending hours of billable time adjusting my Facebook preferences. The real reason, of course, for all this stuff, is that it provides a way to blow off work you should be doing, while creating the illusion that you are achieving something.

This book was written in those long hours I spent waiting for my wife to get dressed to go out. And if she had never gotten dressed at all this book would never have been written.

Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.

I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book.

If I leave my computer, I'm probably not going to get back for hours. If I take a few minutes to answer questions and go web surfing, then guilt kicks in and I get back to work.

It's very easy to fool yourself that you're working, you know, when you're really not working very hard. I mean, I'm very lazy. So for me, I would always have an excuse, you know, to go - quit early, go to a museum, you know. So I do everything I can to make myself remember this is a job. I keep a schedule.

Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.

I don't think it's shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing.

Most people travel with a good book, but I also keep my agenda with me; I'll flip through the pages and take a few moments to organize my life a little - I rarely get the time to do this normally.

I waste most of the day, then finally start to write around 3 P.M., totally disgusted with myself for my wasteful nature.

My routine is to create activities for myself unrelated to writing that allow little time for writing. This means that when I do get the chance to write, it is like a stolen luxury, something clandestine and almost forbidden.

Starting with 'Forever, Interrupted,' I somehow convinced myself that in order to create content, I had to consume content. What this means is that I have legitimized binge-watching television and told myself that I must do it for work.

I'm the worst night owl, because I'm a self-loathing night owl who thinks, 'No, I should be getting up early.' It feels unproductive. I must get over that.

I get most of my reading done whenever I'm in the airport waiting on a flight, have some time to kill, and I have a book with me.

The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.

There isn't a single day I don't do some writing -- if you don't, you won't have a book. When you're self-employed it is very easy to burn away your time instead -- answering e-mails, surfing the Internet, or hanging out with friends. You really must have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Most of what I am writing is living in the back of my head or in my subconscious. I find if I write every day, my subconscious will do the job for me.

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

I also really like to read good books and I don't have enough time to do it. So it's really hard for me to imagine willingly submitting myself to a trilogy of books that I've been told are at the fourth grade reading level which isn't a very nice thing to say but.

It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, "Well what's the point of me writing anything?" I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing.

If I do not seem to be mentioning anything I’ve read lately, it is because I am in one of those periods of undifferentiated flux or something in which I am reading about fifty, at a minimum, books at once, so of course I seldom finish one. Eventually this phase will pass, and I’ll discover I have about ten pages to go in all of them, and will sit down and systematically finish them, one after another.

Actually, I'm reading a lot of my scripts. When I'm working on something, it's hard to find time. You're always prepping new material. You don't want to be buried in a book. It splits your focus a little bit.

Procrastination is not Laziness", I tell him. "It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.

I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book—third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time.

In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit's cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me.