Harlan Ellison Quotes

I am not generally regarded as a pleasant or socially minded fellow.

Beauty set up distance between other people and me. It warped their behavior.

I've never had friends, and I don't like to be around big groups of people.

I pity anybody who has to spend a day with me.

The thing is, I really can't relate to anyone my own age. Not in a superior way - an inferior way, if anything. Socially, I have no idea what my friends are talking about. I don't listen to any new music. I feel very secluded.

I never spent much time with people my own age.

I don't go on lunch dates with friends. I hear about people having dinner parties, but I never do that. I'm not really human.

Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own.

I'm not nostalgic for my glory days in college. It was lame for me. Probably because I had no friends.

I sometimes feel like it's difficult for people to relate to me, until they spend, like, a day with me, and until they walk around with me in public.

I had friends, but I was always a bit weird.

I couldn't identify with anyone. At school, I was considered very strange. I didn't understand the relationships between people.

I would go to school and try to talk to my mates about music and playing instruments and stuff, and they would turn around and go, 'What're you talking about? Shut up.' And I realised that I was the weird one.

I don't fit into a group very well socially. And that might be reflected in my music.

I don't socialise. My social life is minus zero.

I've always been on the outside looking in. I was never popular in school, despite my success in athletics. I would win track and field competitions, but I wouldn't go to parties. I'd be alone.

It must be horrible having people scared to talk to you. But I think it's kinda cool that I don't really know anyone in that way.

So, this is how it's become? This is how I've become? A walking contradiction? I'm surrounded by people and feel alone. I claim to crave a bit of normalcy but now that I have some, it's like I don't know what to do with it, I don't know how to be a normal person anymore.

My misfortune is doubly painful to me because it will result in my being misunderstood. For me there can be no recreation in the company of others, no intelligent conversation, no exchange of information with peers; only the most pressing needs can make me venture into society. I am obliged to live like an outcast.

Urban people, of course, are terribly scared nowadays. They may yearn for society, but it is risky to go around talking to strangers, for a lot of reasons, one being that people are so accustomed not to have many human contacts that they are afraid they may find out they really prefer life that way.

All through the nineties I met people. Crowds of people. Met and met and met, until it seemed that people were born and hastily grew up, just to be met.

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

There is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room.

I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you're doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you're lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you're really lucky.

When we sat down to eat I took inventory of the people in the room, and the remnants of my good mood evaporated when I realized how very little I had in common with them – the career dads, the responsible and diligent moms – and I was soon filled with dread and loneliness. I locked in on the smug feeling of superiority that married couples give off and that permeated the air – the shared assumptions, the sweet and contented apathy, it all lingered everywhere – despite the absence in the room of anyone single at which to aim this.