Harlan Ellison

“Writing a novel is like going a great distance to take a small shit.”

“Most fiction says you may or may not be alive tomorrow; science fiction talks often about the future.”

“Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver.”

“A writer who writes more than he reads is an amateur.”

“History will decide if I'm a villain or a hero.”

“I have no mouth, and I must scream.”

“Love ain't nothing but sex misspelled.”

“Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things.”

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

“People keep saying that books will never die out. Well, books may never die out, but hundreds of thousands of individual writers will, and for them, it's as if books did die out.”

“You watch enough TV, and very soon the inside of your head has become a vast, arid plain, across which you cannot detect the passage of a thought.”

“I don't mind you thinking I'm stupid, but don't talk to me like I'm stupid.”

“It is not merely enough to love literature if one wishes to spend one's life as a writer. It is a dangerous undertaking on the most primitive level. For, it seems to me, the act of writing with serious intent involves enormous personal risk. It entails the ongoing courage for self-discovery. It means one will walk forever on the tightrope, with each new step presenting the possiblity of learning a truth about oneself that is too terrible to bear.”

“There might be children in Somalia or the Arctic who have never heard of 'Hamlet' or the 'Great Gatsby.' But you can bet they know 'Tarzan.'”

“When you're all alone out there, on the end of the typewriter, with each new story a new appraisal by the world of whether you can still get it up or not, arrogance and self-esteem and deep breathing are all you have. It often looks like egomania. I assure you it's the bold coverup of the absolutely terrified.”

“We've got technological wonders around us, and we've used them to abrogate all responsibility for everything in our lives.”

“I hate being wrong, but I love it when I'm set straight.”

“Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours wasted minutes years of repetition and time that has been killed.”

“I would jump at the chance to work with the inordinately-talented J.J. Abrams on a new 'Star Trek' film.”

“I don't remember anyone who could stand being in my company for more than five hours without running into the street.”