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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

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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.
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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.
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Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Writing is a holy chore.
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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.
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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.
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Love ain't nothing but sex misspelled.
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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.
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When belief in a god dies, the god dies.
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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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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?
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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.
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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 have no mouth. And I must scream.
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You must never be afraid to go there.
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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.
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be careful of monsters with teeth
Harlan Ellison