Craig Batley > Craig's Quotes

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
― Harlan Ellison

“The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine...

And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.”
― Harlan Ellison, The Essential Ellison: A 50 Year Retrospective

“I was the green monkey, the pariah. And I had no friends. Not just a few friends, or one good friend, or grudging acceptance by other misfits and outcasts. I was alone. All stinking alone, without even an imaginary playmate.”
― Harlan Ellison

“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”
― Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream

“Repent, Harlequin," said the Ticktock Man. "Get stuffed," the Harlequin replied.”
― Harlan Ellison, Paingod and Other Delusions

“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.”
― Harlan Ellison

“To say more is to say less.”
― Harlan Ellison

“The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line, insight by insight.”
― Harlan Ellison

“In my ugly, elitist opinion we are not all entitled to voice our opinions, we are entitled to pass along our informed opinions.”
― Harlan Ellison

“They minute people fall in love they become liars.”
― Harlan Ellison

“Uh, excuse me, sir, I, uh, don't known how to uh, to uh, tell you this, but you were three minutes late. The schedule is a little, uh, bit off."
He grinned sheepishly.
"That's ridiculous!" murmured the Ticktockman behind his mask. "Check your watch." And then he went into his office, going mrmee, mrmee, mrmee, mrmee.”
― Harlan Ellison, The Essential Ellison: A 50 Year Retrospective

“Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste?”
― Harlan Ellison, Deathbird Stories

“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. It is not my job to lull you with a false sense of the rightness of the universe. This wonderful and terrible occupation of recreating the world in a different way, each time fresh and strange, is an act of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. I stir the soup. I inconvenience you. I make your nose run and your eyeballs water.”
― Harlan Ellison

“Writing a novel is like going a great distance to take a small shit.”
― Harlan Ellison

“Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself.”
― Harlan Ellison

“When you're all alone out there, on the end of the typewriter, with each new story a new appraisal by the world of whether you can still get it up or not, arrogance and self-esteem and deep breathing are all you have. It often looks like egomania. I assure you it's the bold coverup of the absolutely terrified.”
― Harlan Ellison, Shatterday

“Why let them order you about? Why let them tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots? Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace! Don't be slaves of time, it's a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees...down with the Ticktockman!”
― Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

“I can't picture in my mind three hundred and sixty thousand dollars... When I think of it, all I can see in my mind is a big nickel.”
― Harlan Ellison

“I will use big words from time to time, the meanings of which I may only vaguely perceive, in hopes such cupidity will send you scampering to your dictionary: I will call such behavior 'public service'.”
― Harlan Ellison

“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.”
― Harlan Ellison

“The ability to dream is all I have to give. That is my responsibility; that is my burden. And even I grow tired.”
― Harlan Ellison, Stalking the Nightmare

“We walked for some time, and grew to know each other, as best as we'd allow. These are some of the high points. They lack continuity. I don't apologize. I merely pointed it out, adding with some truth, I feel, that most liaisons lack continuity. We find ourselves in odd places at various times, and for a brief span we link our lives to others and then, our time elapsed, we move apart. Through a haze of pain occasionally, usually through a veil of memory that clings, then passes, sometimes as though we have never touched.”
― Harlan Ellison

“Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djan karet. We are the cavalry. We're here. Put away the pills. We'll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it'll be your turn to help us.
"Eidolons" (1988)”
― Harlan Ellison

“K is for "Kenghis Khan"; He was a very nice person. History has no record of him. There is a moral in that, somewhere.”
― Harlan Ellison

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”
― Harlan Ellison, Strange Wine

“be careful of monsters with teeth”
― Harlan Ellison

“In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.”
― Harlan Ellison

“Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching. ”
― Harlan Ellison

“Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver.”
― Harlan Ellison

“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
― Harlan Ellison