harlan ellison

“ I don't know how you perceive my mission as a writer, but for me it is not a responsibility to reaffirm your concretized myths and provincial prejudices. ”

“ Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things. ”

“ The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer. ”

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

“ Let me first establishon your behalffeelings of animosity and disgust at the mendacity inherent in this concept of ”

“ He was just Ron and I kinda liked him, mostly because he wrote well, and I never felt he took all that Scientology nonsense seriously but knew how to make a good buck, and he liked me, and... well, he was a friend who died. ”

“ Of all liars, the smoothest and most convincing is memory. ”

“ She thinks we were all killed when they made the Great Sweep, but I escaped in the mud. ”

“ Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. ”

“ We talked across each other, our conversation at right angles, only meeting in the intersections of silence at storys end. ”