Talk:Harlan Ellison

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Harlan Ellison page.


Untitled[edit]

Harlan Ellison is brazen and more often than not politically correct. Although I think his position on God is more shock than true crock, his position on TV is radically better: "I think television is itself bad. The idea of television, the act of watching television kills the imagination. It's not like radio, with radio you had to listen, had to make things, you had to build things in your mind. Movies do that. Television is something else again. Television lays it all out there in a very prescribed way and the bare minimum of imagination on the part of the viewer is needed and I really fear for all of us." (spoken in a 1979 interview by Robert W. Bly, quoted from The Online Copywriter's Handbook, pub. in 2002)

—This unsigned comment is by 24.26.53.121 (talkcontribs) .
The quote mentioned has been extended and now added to the page. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 06:58, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced[edit]

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Harlan Ellison. --Antiquary 17:55, 17 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Did you ever notice, the only one in A Christmas Carol with any character is Scrooge? Marley is a whiner who fucked over the world and then hadn't the spine to pay his dues quietly; Belle, Scrooge's ex-girlfriend, deserted him when he needed her most; Bob Cratchit is a gutless toady without enough get-up-and-go to assert himself; and the less said about that little treacle-mouth, Tiny Tim, the better.
  • The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
    • A strikingly similar comment by Frank Zappa is documented (1989). This alleged Ellison quote is not documented and seems unverifiable. Tricky.
  • 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."
  • In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.
  • The real story of our times is seldom told in the horse-puckey-filled memoirs of dopey, self-serving presidents or generals, but in the outrageous, demented lives of guys like Lenny Bruce, Giordano Bruno, Scott Fitzgerald — and Paul Krassner. The burrs under society's saddle. The pains in the ass.
  • There are two things I found when I did the Merv Griffin show, the two things I said that got them really crazy, was that I didn't believe in god, and that I really believe there are some people who are better than others.
  • When they say, "Gee, it's an information explosion!" — no, it's not an explosion, it's a disgorgement of the bowels is what it is. Every idiotic thing that anybody could possibly write or say or think can get into the body politic now — where before things would have to have some merit to go through the publishing routine, now, anything. And all you're getting is an explosion of useless crap, which added to the other useless crap that was being done originally, only makes it that much worse.
    • Compare with "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea; massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." by Gene Spafford
  • Why do people keep insisting that I join the twenty-first century? I live in the twenty-first century! I just don't want to be bothered by the shitheads on the internet!