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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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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
Things
Core
Painful
Dreads
Write
Darkest
Soul
Mortal
Better
Dread
Writing
Mortals
Trying
Closer
Work
Burning

More quotes by 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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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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The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.
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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.
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My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths.
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.
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Writing is a holy chore.
Harlan Ellison
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In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.
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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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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The real name for 'science' is magic.
Harlan Ellison
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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
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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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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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be careful of monsters with teeth
Harlan Ellison
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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
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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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I usually say I write for the smartest, cleverest, wittiest audience I know, and that's me.
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
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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