Harlan Ellison Quotes

One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, 'This end is more important than the other.' After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

It's hard to shape glass. It took me years of practice, and as a result, I've never gotten bored with it. It's difficult. Every time I come into the studio, I've got some sort of new challenge. And something that I would like to learn how to do better, and the material never disappoints me.

I don't know if people realize how hard I work, because sometimes people ask me for my secret. The truth is that I don't have any secrets apart from the fact that I've been directing theater and film for twenty years and trying at every stage to make my work better.

I'm going to get better and better. You never stop learning in this game.

I try new techniques and styles almost every day, so I'm always challenging myself.

Our craft is all we have. So, we should keep it challenging and exciting. Else, there's no actual growth.

Experimenting is part of the process. I remember when I was younger, I spent a whole year just writing on straight trap beats because I just wanted to be able to do that at a high level. So it's about perfecting your craft in every way.

If you want to be good at anything, you have to work hard at it. It doesn't just fall from the sky. I work every day at trying to improve my writing, and I really enjoy it. Nothing fascinates me more than putting words together, and seeing how a collection of words can produce quite a profound effect.

You have to attempt to find new forms that will force you to write freshly and better and hopefully more truthfully.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

You become a great writer by writing.

I think all artists need to try to improve, or their work gets stale.

I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

I'm a better coach now than when I joined Celtic. The longer you stay in any job, the better you become. If you lose your drive, your enthusiasm, your imagination, that experience is no good.

Well I tried to, but I could never write anything that I liked or was worthwhile. I threw it all out and realized that I had to make a serious study- that my tastes were far more advanced than my abilities.

In the beginning I used to make one terrible play a game. Then I got so I'd make one a week and finally I'd pull a bad one about once a month. Now, I'm trying to keep it down to one a season.

You have to study your field and you have to find out how other people do it, and you have to keep working and learning and practicing and ultimately, you would be able to do it.

The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or a bad movie, it's just to see what you learn for the next one.

Yes, it's absolutely true that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly - until you can learn to do it well.

'Humans of New York' did not result from a flash on inspiration. It grew from five years of experimenting, tinkering, and messing up.

Don't worry that you can't seem to come up with sure billion dollar winners at first. Just do projects for yourself for fun. You'll get better and better.

I want to get better and better at my craft.

The more you draw, the better you get.

If someone is better than you at something, then it's likely because she has failed at it more than you have. If someone is worse than you, it's likely because he hasn't been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.