Quote

[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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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
Looking
Anyone
Given
Human
Monarchy
Humans
Tired
Men
Respect
Love
Says
Responsibility

More quotes by Harlan Ellison

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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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I can't picture in my mind three hundred and sixty thousand dollars... When I think of it, all I can see in my mind is a big nickel.
Harlan Ellison
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When belief in a god dies, the god dies.
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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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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People don't die from the old diseases any more. They die from new ones, but that's Progress, isn't it? Isn't it?
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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They change scapegoats at the networks more regularly than some people change socks.
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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Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself.
Harlan Ellison
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Uh, excuse me, sir, I, uh, don't known how to uh, to uh, tell you this, but you were three minutes late. The schedule is a little, uh, bit off. He grinned sheepishly. That's ridiculous! murmured the Ticktockman behind his mask. Check your watch. And then he went into his office, going mrmee, mrmee, mrmee, mrmee.
Harlan Ellison
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The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.
Harlan Ellison
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Like a wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we were, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.
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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They minute people fall in love they become liars.
Harlan Ellison
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The trap into which all writers have, will, or should fall into, of writing The Great American Watchamacallit, is such an uncluttered and inviting one that from time to time I'm sure even the greatest have to pull themselves up short by the Shift key to remind themselves that it is story first that they should write.
Harlan Ellison
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The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
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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With the Internet, the greatest disseminator of bad data and bad information the universe has ever known, it's become impossible to trust any news from any source at all, because it's filtered through this crazy yenta gossip line. It's impossible to know anything.
Harlan Ellison
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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