“Writing a novel is like going a great distance to take a small shit.” — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
I write a kind of surreal fantasy, but they can't put 'surreal fantasy' on a paperback. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
I usually say I write for the smartest, cleverest, wittiest audience I know, and that's me. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
When you're a writer, you have to have the passion and the skill and the craft. It's not just enough to have… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Because the chief commodity a writer has to sell is his courage. And if he has none, he is more than a… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
I don't think I've ever really been a science fiction writer. I'm closer to a fantasist, speculative fiction, whatever, but labels are… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
People keep saying that books will never die out. Well, books may never die out, but hundreds of thousands of individual writers… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
I'm nothing. Nothing at all without writing. Without truth, my truth, the only truth I know, it's all a gambol in the… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
I refuse to write the same story twice. I keep experimenting. I keep learning how to work. I've been at it pretty… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
The more you know, the more unflinchingly you deny casual beliefs and Accepted Wisdom when it flies in the face of reality,… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you –… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
The trap into which all writers have, will, or should fall into, of writing The Great American Watchamacallit, is such an uncluttered… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Everybody has a talent, whether it's scrapbooking, or kite-flying, or brain surgery, or writing, everybody has a talent. And if they discover… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
The act of writing means you wish to communicate. Whether you're writing a memoir for yourself you put in a drawer, or… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
“I intend to keep writing stories that piss people off, that tell the particular kind of truth I think is valid, that… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
It is not merely enough to love literature if one wishes to spend one's life as a writer. It is a dangerous… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
I don't know how you perceive my mission as a writer, but for me it is not a responsibility to reaffirm your… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
“The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line,… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
You're a writer. And that's something better than being a millionaire. Because it's something holy. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
“The only thing worth writing about is people. People . Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Any writer who pretends to a disaffection for recognition, I think they're being duplicitous. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Everywhere I go, I find that writers are treated as if they are invisible, as if they don't matter. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good,… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
“I hate when a director says to me 'Here's how I envision this scene'...excuse me? It's right here in the script -… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
There is Harlan Ellison the human being, who takes a crap a couple of times a day, and who farts, and who… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
What I try to write about are the darkest things in the soul, the mortal dreads... The closer I get to the… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
There is no nobler chore in the craft of writing than holding up the mirror of reality and turning it slightly, so… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste? — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
They change scapegoats at the networks more regularly than some people change socks. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Repent, Harlequin," said the Ticktock Man. "Get stuffed," the Harlequin replied. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
“Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created...” — Harlan Ellison Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
“There are forces in the world today, Mr. Winsocki, that are invisibly working to make us all carbon copies of one another. Forces that… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
“Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.”… — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
I write a kind of surreal fantasy, but they can't put 'surreal fantasy' on a paperback. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver. — Harlan Ellison Copy Share Image
![“The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line, insight by insight. If you do not do it, the story is a failure. [...] There is no nobler chore in the universe than holding up the mirror of reality and turning it…” quote by Harlan Ellison](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/d91/harlan-ellison-2133_men-and-women_the-only-thing-worth-writing-about-is-pe_572278.jpg)
![“There is Harlan Ellison the human being, who takes a crap a couple of times a day, and who farts, and who eats chicken croquettes, if I can find them. And then there is the writer, this writer-person, who is a much finer person than I. Much more orderly, much more meaningful. Worthier, than I [am].” quote by Harlan Ellison](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/091/harlan-ellison-2133_chickens_there-is-harlan-ellison-the-human-being_2766268.jpg)
