Quote

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

Harlan Ellison

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Cleverest
Wittiest
Smartest
Usually
Audience
Write
Writing

More quotes by Harlan Ellison

Image
And we passed through the cavern of rats. And we passed through the path of boiling steam. And we passed through the country of the blind. And we passed through the slough of despond. And we passed through the vale of tears. And we came, finally, to the ice caverns.
Harlan Ellison
Image
I made as many mistakes as anybody else. I sound as if I'm an egomaniac, and I suppose in some ways I'm filled with hubris because I know how good I am at certain things. But other things, I can't do at all. I can't draw.
Harlan Ellison
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Writing is a holy chore.
Harlan Ellison
Image
There in the midst of the Amazon Jungle, Simon Haskell has cobbled up for himself a replica of an Art Deco salon.
Harlan Ellison
Image
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
Image
Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning the end will take care of itself.
Harlan Ellison
Image
I have no mouth. And I must scream.
Harlan Ellison
Image
In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.
Harlan Ellison
Image
When belief in a god dies, the god dies.
Harlan Ellison
Image
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
Image
The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
Harlan Ellison
Image
I don't mind you thinking I'm stupid, but don't talk to me like I'm stupid.
Harlan Ellison
Image
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
Image
Y is for YGGDRASIL. The legendary Nordic ash tree with its three roots extending into the lands of mortals, giants, and Niflheim, the land of mist, grows in Wisconsin. Legend has it that when the tree falls, the universe will fall. Next Wednesday, the State Highway Commission comes through that empty pasture with a freeway.
Harlan Ellison
Image
I will use big words from time to time, the meanings of which I may only vaguely perceive, in hopes such cupidity will send you scampering to your dictionary: I will call such behavior 'public service'.
Harlan Ellison
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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