Warren Ellis > Quotes

“Did you ever want to set someone's head on fire, just to see what it looked like? Did you ever stand in the street and think to yourself, I could make that nun go blind just by giving her a kiss? Did you ever lay out plans for stitching babies and stray cats into a Perfect New Human? Did you ever stand naked surrounded by people who want your gleaming sperm, squirting frankincense, soma and testosterone from every pore? If so, then you're the bastard who stole my drugs Friday night. And I'll find you. Oh, yes.”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 5: Lonely City

“By four o'clock, I've discounted suicide in favor of killing everyone else in the entire world instead.”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard

“Drinking is fun! It makes me feel horrible and sexy!”
― Warren Ellis

“You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism.”
― Warren Ellis

“If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?”
― Warren Ellis

“I want a tattoo over my heart that reads TRY HARDER YOU LAZY PARAMEDIC SHITBAG OR I WILL HAUNT YOUR BEDROOM FOREVER”
― Warren Ellis

“Tradition:' one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking.”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 4: The New Scum

“Dance like you're stamping on a human face forever, love like you've been in a serious car crash that minced the front of your brain, stab like no one can arrest you, and live like there's no such thing as God.”
― Warren Ellis

“Here in Britain, of course, it's Thank Fuck We Got Those Weird Jesus Bastards On The Boat Day”
― Warren Ellis

“The book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore's best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It's hard to describe just how much better the book is.

It's like, "If the movie was an episode of Battlestar Galactica with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is Citizen Kane with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end."

That's how much better it is.”
― Warren Ellis

“Be authentic to your dreams. Be authentic to your own idea about yourself. Grind away at your own minds and bodies until you become your own invention. Be Mad Scientists.”
― Warren Ellis, Doktor Sleepless, Volume 1: Engines of Desire

“Scotch whisky is made from barley and the morning dew on angel's nipples.”
― Warren Ellis

“There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long— PEOPLE. No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened. It's people that kill every revolution.”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street

“Journalism is just a gun. It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world.”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street

“You want to know about voting. I'm here to tell you about voting. Imagine you're locked in a huge underground night-club filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pitbulls for fun. And you ain't allowed out until you all vote on what you're going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch "Republican Party Reservation". They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand new sexual organs you did not even know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That's voting. You're welcome.”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard

“He'd always liked women who'd talk back to him just a little bit. "Girls with balls" were good. Women with an actual mind of their own who could prove him wrong in something were, of course, castrating bitches who should be drowned in bottomless wells.”
― Warren Ellis, Crooked Little Vein

“Writer's block? I've heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn't a writer anymore. I'm sorry, but the job is getting up in the fucking morning and writing for a living.”
― Warren Ellis

“The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species.”
― Warren Ellis

“My grandfather had died, and my mother was trying to explain it to me. . . .Grandpa isn't coming back? No, she said. Not ever again. . . . And I remember saying, hold everything right fucking there. You went to all the trouble of conceiving me, and giving birth to me, and raising me and clothing me and all . . . and you make me cry and things hurt so much and disappointments crush my heart every day and I can't do half the things I want to and sometimes I just want to scream -- and what I've got to look forward to is my body breaking and something flipping off the switch in my head -- I go through all this, and then there's death? What is the motherfucking deal here? I wasn't having this. This was not fair.”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 5: Lonely City

“What? I bring joy to the world. I am filled with mirth and sunlight. Also, I am Batman.”
― Warren Ellis

“Chris Claremont once said of Alan Moore, "if he could plot, we'd all have to get together and kill him." Which utterly misses the most compelling part of Alan's writing, the way he develops and expresses ideas and character. Plot does not define story. Plot is the framework within which ideas are explored and personalities and relationships are unfolded.”
― Warren Ellis

“I was having a mildly paranoid day, mostly due to the fact that the mad priest lady from over the river had taken to nailing weasels to my front door again.”
― Warren Ellis

“So this Zealot comes to my door, all glazed eyes and clean reproductive organs, asking me if I ever think about God. So I tell him I killed God. I tracked God down like a rabid dog, hacked off his legs with a hedge trimmer, raped him with a corncob, and boiled off his corpse in an acid bath. So he pulls an alternating-current taser on me and tells me that only the Official Serbian Church of Tesla can save my polyphase intrinsic electric field, known to non-engineers as "the soul." So I hit him. What would you do?”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard

“...You people don't know what the truth is! It's there, just under their bullshit, but you never look! That's what I hate most about this fucking city-- LIES ARE NEWS AND TRUTH IS OBSOLETE!”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 2: Lust for Life

“Listen to the Chair Leg of Truth! It does not lie!”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 9: The Cure

“Writing comics? Still the best job in the world. I sit around all day making shit up and see it illustrated, in 99% of cases, exactly as I imagined it -- if not better. I've been doing this a long time now, and I'm going to do it until I die. Which probably won't be long, given the constant insane deadline pressure.”
― Warren Ellis

“Bugger this. I want a better world.”
― Warren Ellis, The Authority, Vol. 2: Under New Management

“Hi. I’m Spider Jerusalem. I smoke. I take drugs. I drink. I wash every six weeks. I masturbate constantly and fling my steaming poison semen down from my window into your hair and food. I’m a rich and respected columnist for a major metropolitan newspaper. I live with two beautiful women in the city’s most expensive and select community. Being a bastard works.”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 4: The New Scum

“ You're probably wondering why there's never any good news.
I mean, I've been doing this job a few months now. I've been soaking up the paper every week, same as you, and watching the same newsfeeds as you. I got the same list burned into the front of my head as you. Death. Horror. Bad sex. Living nightmares. Each day a little further down the spiral.
There's never any good news because they know you.
I mean, here's the top of today's column that I discarded: I had a really good time last night down the bar with my assistant and some cheerfully doomed sex fiends of our acquaintance.
No one ever sold newspapers by telling you the truth; life just ain't that bad.”
― Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 0: Tales of Human Waste

“Listen, when some asshole pulls a gun on me, he loses his right to a warm milky drink and fucking cuddles, okay?”
― Warren Ellis, Black Summer