Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellisonis an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 May 1934
CityCleveland, OH
CountryUnited States of America
fighting past years
Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours wasted minutes years of repetition and time that has been killed.
jobs writing years
I refuse to write the same story twice. I keep experimenting. I keep learning how to work. I've been at it pretty much 50 years, and I'm now beginning to learn how to do the job well.
brief came cared carries conquerors crying deeds endlessly memories names time wind
Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.
love education hate
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
civilization history moral nice record
K is for Kenghis Khan. He was a very nice person. History has no record of him. There is a moral in that, somewhere.
people upset quality
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.
love-is people
I am not one of these people who instantly takes umbrage when he's corrected or - I love being corrected.
mean writing wish
The act of writing means you wish to communicate. Whether you're writing a memoir for yourself you put in a drawer, or you write a poem and you send it to a little magazine, or you write for publication, it always means - the form follows function.
knowing responsible wanted
I am responsible for myself. I am exactly who I eventually wanted myself to be, I guess, without consciously knowing what I wanted me to be.
mistake way egomaniacs
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.
meaningful couple fart
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].
writing doctors flying
Everybody has a talent, whether it's scrapbooking, or kite-flying, or brain surgery, or writing, everybody has a talent. And if they discover it, and they turn it to their purposes and make a living out of it, then they become not "that person," but they become "that writer" or "that doctor" or "that supervisor."
thinking recognition
Any writer who pretends to a disaffection for recognition, I think they're being duplicitous.
passion skills crafts
When you're a writer, you have to have the passion and the skill and the craft. It's not just enough to have the passion. You've gotta have all three.