Life & Wisdom Quote by Piers Anthony

A working writer admitting he doesn’t read or listen “for pleasure” lands like a small scandal, partly because it violates the romance we sell about authors: that they’re lifelong, blissed-out consumers of other people’s sentences. Piers Anthony flips that expectation with a brusque, almost defensive practicality. The line’s power is in its blunt hierarchy of time. “Pleasure” isn’t denied as a value; it’s demoted as a luxury. The subtext is the tyranny of output: if you make your living producing stories, consuming them can feel like unpaid labor, research, or worse, a temptation to compare, borrow, or stall.

Anthony’s second sentence - “I have too much else to do” - is doing rhetorical heavy lifting. It’s not “I don’t enjoy it,” which would invite aesthetic judgment; it’s “I can’t afford it,” which frames the choice as necessity. That shift seeks absolution. It also signals a particular mid-century, workmanlike vision of authorship: writing as schedule, craft, and responsibility, not mystic vocation. Coming from a prolific genre novelist, it reads as a productivity credo disguised as confession.

There’s an edge of self-protection, too. Not reading “for pleasure” can be a way to keep one’s voice unpolluted, to avoid trend-chasing, or to sidestep the anxiety of influence. Yet the statement also courts a quiet contradiction: fiction thrives on curiosity. The sentence dares you to ask whether the “else” is life, work, or simply the fear that pleasure is time you can’t justify.