Latest Harlan Ellison Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I never send a story off until I have read it aloud to at least two or three people. Because when I read - and I don't need their criticism, what I need is my own - when I read it aloud, there is a flow, there is a poetry to it.

  Harlan Ellison

  Two, People, Criticism

  "Harlan Ellison, Part Two". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 08, 2008.

• 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.

  Harlan Ellison

  Passion, Skills, Three

  "Harlan Ellison, Part Two". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 8, 2008.

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

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Audience, Knows

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 8, 2008.

• 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

  Mediocrity, Levels, Information

  "Harlan Ellison, Part Two". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 08, 2008.

• Any writer who pretends to a disaffection for recognition, I think they're being duplicitous.

  Harlan Ellison

  Thinking, Recognition

  "Harlan Ellison, Part Two". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 8, 2008.

• I think art must be tough! I think art has to be hard. I don't think it should be easy. I think it should take foot-pounds of energy to produce that art, otherwise we would have more mediocre writers, and we don't have room for any more mediocrity in the world. There's already enough of it being visited on us night and day through the Internet, and through television, and through politics.

  Harlan Ellison

  Art, Night, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• 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.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Mean, Wish

  "Harlan Ellison, Part Two". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 08, 2008.

• 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."

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Doctors, Flying

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 8, 2008.

• If you let the image of the messenger get in the way of whatever message there may be, however large or small, that's your problem, not his.

  Harlan Ellison

  May, Way, Messengers

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 8, 2008.

• 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].

  Harlan Ellison

  Meaningful, Couple, Fart

  "Harlan Ellison, Part Two". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 08, 2008.

• I am not one of these people who instantly takes umbrage when he's corrected or - I love being corrected.

  Harlan Ellison

  Love Is, People

  "Harlan Ellison, Part Two". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 08, 2008.

• 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

  Mistake, Sound, Way

  "Harlan Ellison, Part One". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 6, 2008.

• 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

  People, Upset, Quality

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 8, 2008.

• 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.

  Harlan Ellison

  Knowing, Responsible, Wanted

  "Harlan Ellison, Part One". Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 6, 2008.