"All writers in some insane place believe that to write is a holy chore — that what one wishes to do is speak to one’s time, to make a difference, to say: "I was here. I was a force for good in some way."

“I’ve been on my own since I was 13. I grew up having to use my wits. My parents were not wealthy. We weren’t poor, but we had a lot of meals with noodles. I was born during the Depression. My parents died pretty much penniless. Every dollar I’ve ever made I earned myself. I don’t believe in luck. Louis Pasteur said, "Chance favors the prepared mind." The smarter you are, the more you know, the better. I was the only Jew in town and I was my generation’s Bart Simpson. I knew the world could be mine.”

“I go to bed angry every night, I wake up angry every morning. There are certain injustices in this life you’ve got to do something about. You can’t just say that you can’t fight it, or it’s too much trouble, or that you don’t have the time or the effort, or that you can’t win. Forget all that. Fight them all! I fight them all because you never know which one is the big one. You never know which you give up and then it will come back and bite you in the ass. You never look away from a mountain lion, you lock eyes and you don’t let him get behind you.”

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”

“He had writer's block once. It was the worst ten minutes of his life.”

“For a brief time I was here; and for a brief time I mattered.”

“Writers, Other Notables React to the Death of Harlan Ellison" in The New York Times”