Top 30 Harlan Ellison Quotes

When belief in a god dies, the god dies.

The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

All you have to do is look out around you at the good things you’ve done, and you’ll know how good you are.

Nobody escapes age and gravity.

You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.

People keep saying that books will never die out. Well, books may never die out, but hundreds of thousands of individual writers will, and for them, it’s as if books did die out.

To say more, is to say less.

History will decide if I’m a villain or a hero.

There might be children in Somalia or the Arctic who have never heard of ‘Hamlet’ or the ‘Great Gatsby.’ But you can bet they know ‘Tarzan.’

Everywhere I go, I find that writers are treated as if they are invisible, as if they don’t matter.

Success is to bring into existence, in adult terms, your childhood dreams.

You watch enough TV, and very soon the inside of your head has become a vast, arid plain, across which you cannot detect the passage of a thought.

I don’t mind you thinking I’m stupid, but don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.

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 ultimately derogatory, and I eschew them as best I can.

I’m like a snake sleeping on a rock. I won’t bother you unless you poke a stick at me.

I never know what I’m going to talk about until I get on stage. I never give the same lecture twice, which is why I’ll have people follow me from place to place like Deadheads.

I’m a storyteller. If I have that on my precis when I go, ‘Storyteller,’ I’m satisfied with that.

I write a kind of surreal fantasy, but they can’t put ‘surreal fantasy’ on a paperback.

Five thousand Don Hecks are not worth one Neal Adams.

I would jump at the chance to work with the inordinately-talented J.J. Abrams on a new ‘Star Trek’ film.

I don’t remember anyone who could stand being in my company for more than five hours without running into the street.

I go to bed angry every night, and I get up angrier every morning.

There’s some things that no amount of money can get me to do.

I’m not nearly as significant as Ralph Nader or the local plumber.

Love ain’t nothing but sex misspelled.

I have no mouth, and I must scream.

I’m real tall when I stand on my charisma.

It was a superlative joy of my long life to have worked with Leonard Nimoy, who became my friend, and many others at ‘Star Trek.’

I hate being wrong, but I love it when I’m set straight.

Science fiction and fantasy is a kind of literature that embodies the highest aspirations of the human race.