Harlan Ellison Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Intelligent, Praise

  58 Copy quote

• The more you know, the more unflinchingly you deny casual beliefs and Accepted Wisdom when it flies in the face of reality, the more carefully you observe the world and its people around you, the better chance you have of writing something meaningful and well-crafted.

  Harlan Ellison

  Meaningful, Writing, Reality

  4 Copy quote

• There is no nobler chore in the craft of writing than holding up the mirror of reality and turning it slightly, so we have a new and different perception of the commonplace, the everyday, the 'normal,' the obvious. People are reflected in the glass. The fantasy situation into which you thrust them is the mirror itself. And what we are shown should illuminate and alter our perception of the world around us. Failing that, you have failed totally.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Reality, Glasses

  28 Copy quote

• I think art must be tough! I think art has to be hard. I don't think it should be easy. I think it should take foot-pounds of energy to produce that art, otherwise we would have more mediocre writers, and we don't have room for any more mediocrity in the world. There's already enough of it being visited on us night and day through the Internet, and through television, and through politics.

  Harlan Ellison

  Art, Night, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

  19 Copy quote

• People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

  Harlan Ellison

  Morning, Writing, Thinking

  36 Copy quote

• We walked for some time, and grew to know each other, as best as we'd allow. These are some of the high points. They lack continuity. I don't apologize. I merely pointed it out, adding with some truth, I feel, that most liaisons lack continuity. We find ourselves in odd places at various times, and for a brief span we link our lives to others and then, our time elapsed, we move apart. Through a haze of pain occasionally, usually through a veil of memory that clings, then passes, sometimes as though we have never touched.

  Harlan Ellison

  Pain, Memories, Moving

  Harlan Ellison (2014). “Troublemakers”, p.13, Open Road Media

  36 Copy quote

• They minute people fall in love they become liars.

  Harlan Ellison

  Falling In Love, Liars, People

  Harlan Ellison (2014). “Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled”, p.20, Open Road Media

  25 Copy quote

• The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Becoming, Tricks

  "Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy Speak". Book by Jayme Lynn Blaschke (p. 182), April 1, 2005.

  17 Copy quote

• Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer worth his/her hire knows that all writing, one way or another, is subversive. It is guerrilla warfare against the status quo.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Way, Doe

  Harlan Ellison (2016). “Slippage”, p.128, Hachette UK

  13 Copy quote

• Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.

  Harlan Ellison

  Book, Writing, World

  "Quit Your Day Job!: How to Sleep Late, Do What You Enjoy, and Make a Ton of Money as a Writer". Book by Jim Denney and James D. Denney, 2003.

  25 Copy quote

• The real story of our times is seldom told in the horse-puckey-filled memoirs of dopey, self-serving presidents or generals, but in the outrageous, demented lives of guys like Lenny Bruce, Giordano Bruno, Scott Fitzgerald - and Paul Krassner. The burrs under society's saddle. The pains in the ass.

  Harlan Ellison

  Horse, Pain, Real

  8 Copy quote

• I usually say I write for the smartest, cleverest, wittiest audience I know, and that's me.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Audience, Knows

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 8, 2008.

  9 Copy quote

• The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine... And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.

  Harlan Ellison

  Revenge, Hate, Passion

  11 Copy quote

• I've only been an asshole to assholes!

  Harlan Ellison

  7 Copy quote

• My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths.

  Harlan Ellison

  Philosophy, Frustration, Life Is

  Harlan Ellison (2014). “The Harlan Ellison Hornbook”, p.208, Open Road Media

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• be careful of monsters with teeth

  Harlan Ellison

  Monsters, Teeth, Be Careful

  Harlan Ellison (2014). “The Harlan Ellison Hornbook”, p.56, Open Road Media

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• [On love:] I have no respect for anyone who says they've given up, or that they're not looking or that they're tired. That is to abrogate one's responsibility as a human being.

  Harlan Ellison

  Love, Tired, Responsibility

  6 Copy quote

• The real name for 'science' is magic.

  Harlan Ellison

  Real, Science, Names

  Harlan Ellison (2014). “Troublemakers”, p.238, Open Road Media

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• To say more, is to say less.

  Harlan Ellison

  Harlan Ellison (2016). “Harlan Ellison's Watching”, p.126, Hachette UK

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• A man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams.

  Harlan Ellison

  Dream, Worthy, Your Dreams

  "Delusion for a Dragon Slayer". Short story by Harlan Ellison, 1966.

  6 Copy quote

• I cannot pay attention to what people say about my work. For me, personally, I am just this shards-and-ashes human being, who really gets upset when someone says something bad about me. If it's true, I cop to it. If I have any good qualities, it's that.

  Harlan Ellison

  People, Upset, Quality

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 8, 2008.

  15 Copy quote

• I see all. I hear all. I know all. And I spend a great deal of time in the bathroom.

  Harlan Ellison

  Humorous, Profound, Insane

  7 Copy quote

• The act of writing means you wish to communicate. Whether you're writing a memoir for yourself you put in a drawer, or you write a poem and you send it to a little magazine, or you write for publication, it always means - the form follows function.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Mean, Wish

  "Harlan Ellison, Part Two". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 08, 2008.

  9 Copy quote

• HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

  Harlan Ellison

  Hate, Layers, Miles

  "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream: Stories". Book by Harlan Ellison, April 29, 2014.

  11 Copy quote

• I have but nothing to say to young girls. They're fine to look at, in the way I would look at a case filled with Shang dynasty glazes, but expecting to carry on a conversation with the average teen-aged young lady is akin to reading Voltaire to a cage filled with chimpanzees. I'm certain they would feel the same alienation for me. I can live with that knowledge.

  Harlan Ellison

  Girl, Women, Reading

  Harlan Ellison (2014). “Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled”, p.278, Open Road Media

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