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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

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Harlan Ellison
Age: 84 †
Born: 1934
Born: May 27
Died: 2018
Died: June 27
Film Critic
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Cleveland
Ohio
Harlan Jay Ellison
Intelligent
Reader
Wittiest
Please
Wisest
Audience
Ignore
Universe
Readers
Write
Thank
Writing
Critics
Praise

More quotes by Harlan Ellison

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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
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be careful of monsters with teeth
Harlan Ellison
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Writing is a holy chore.
Harlan Ellison
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Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself.
Harlan Ellison
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That's probably one of my biggest gripes with the Internet - that it settles for mediocrity and disinformation, which puts all information on the same level. Everything has the same value, whether it's Albert Einstein speaking, or yoohoo27@msn.com.
Harlan Ellison
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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
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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.
Harlan Ellison
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Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning the end will take care of itself.
Harlan Ellison
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They change scapegoats at the networks more regularly than some people change socks.
Harlan Ellison
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I will live to piss in the open mouths or the open graves of my enemies, whichever comes first.
Harlan Ellison
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For the first time we have a weapon that nobody has used for thirty years. This gives me great hope for the human race.
Harlan Ellison
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I have no mouth. And I must scream.
Harlan Ellison
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When belief in a god dies, the god dies.
Harlan Ellison
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You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.
Harlan Ellison
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What I try to write about are the darkest things in the soul, the mortal dreads... The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work.
Harlan Ellison
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I don't mind you thinking I'm stupid, but don't talk to me like I'm stupid.
Harlan Ellison
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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
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I think [religion] is presumptuous and I think it is silly, because it makes you believe that you are less than what you can be. As long as you can blame everything on some unseen deity, you don’t ever have to be responsible for your own behavior.
Harlan Ellison
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There in the midst of the Amazon Jungle, Simon Haskell has cobbled up for himself a replica of an Art Deco salon.
Harlan Ellison
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I usually say I write for the smartest, cleverest, wittiest audience I know, and that's me.
Harlan Ellison