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.Collection: Self Esteem
I'm nothing. Nothing at all without writing. Without truth, my truth, the only truth I know, it's all a gambol in the pasture without rhythm or sense.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Passion
Writing is a holy chore.Collection: Writing
They change scapegoats at the networks more regularly than some people change socks.Collection: Media
The more you know, the more unflinchingly you deny casual beliefs and Accepted Wisdom when it flies in the face of reality, the more carefully you observe the world and its people around you, the better chance you have of writing something meaningful and well-crafted.Collection: Meaningful
Repent, Harlequin," said the Ticktock Man. "Get stuffed," the Harlequin replied.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Writing
It is not merely enough to love literature if one wishes to spend one's life as a writer. It is a dangerous undertaking on the most primitive level. For, it seems to me, the act of writing with serious intent involves enormous personal risk. It entails the ongoing courage for self-discovery. It means one will walk forever on the tightrope, with each new step presenting the possiblity of learning a truth about oneself that is too terrible to bear.Collection: Writing
Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Acceptance