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Pain will never leave us. Instead of putting energy into destroying pain, we need to put energy into creating pleasure.

Tom Hodgkinson

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Tom Hodgkinson
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Bookseller
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Newcastle
Pain
Energy
Need
Destroying
Needs
Putting
Never
Creating
Instead
Leave
Pleasure

More quotes by Tom Hodgkinson

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If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends.
Tom Hodgkinson
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There is nothing so perfect as pinball and a pint at 11 a.m.
Tom Hodgkinson
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I would like to propose slow cycling. Commute by bike. At a stroke, you remove the need for and absurd cost of public transport. Cycling is almost completely free. There is no longer any need for the gym as you get fit by cycling. And you can go at your own pace.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Faffing of course does not fit the programme. We are supposed to be busy, productive citizens.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Deleting 200 spams a day is a drag. And I was checking my email constantly, rather than getting on with my real work, which is reading and writing. Email was becoming a distraction, a burden rather than a liberation.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Part of this individualism is you feel this pressure that you alone have to conquer the world, and if you don't work all the hours God gives then you start feeling really guilty. If you can stop feeling guilty, then I think it's easier to start doing what you want to do.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Alongside my no email policy, I resolve to make better use of the wonderful Royal Mail, and send letters and postcards to people. There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too.
Tom Hodgkinson
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When walking you see things that you miss in a motor car or on the train. You give your mind space to ponder.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Embrace the faff. Stare out of the window. Bend paperclips. Stand in the middle of the room trying to remember what you came downstairs for. Pace. Drum your fingertips. Move papers around. Hum. Look at the garden.
Tom Hodgkinson
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I count it as a certainty that in paradise, everyone naps.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Management gurus in general are, I think, best avoided. All too often they reduce your working life to a list of rules to be followed. Targets are aimed at. Goals kicked at. You then break the rules or forget them and, hey presto, you start beating yourself up.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience.
Tom Hodgkinson
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The best thing that can happen to anybody is to be sacked or made redundant because often that's when you think, I don't want to become one of the living dead. I haven't got anything to lose, now I can start to follow my own dreams.
Tom Hodgkinson
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One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?
Tom Hodgkinson
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We have become so obsessed by numbers and by bottom lines that beauty and truth has been knocked aside.
Tom Hodgkinson
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I've never understood activity holidays since we seem to have far too much activity in our daily lives as it is. Find a culture where loafing is the order of the day and where they don't understand our need to be constantly doing things. Find somewhere you can have a hammock holiday.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Paradoxically, to be truly idle, you also have to be efficient.
Tom Hodgkinson
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My idea of childcare at festivals is to sit at a trestle table with an ale while the kids run around and make up their own games.
Tom Hodgkinson
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The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.
Tom Hodgkinson