Top 66 Quotes & Sayings by Warren Ellis

For me, the Internet's like music. I don't like working without it. I will tune it out for hours at a time, as I get lost in the work, but I'd know if it wasn't there. If that makes sense.

The lesson of 'CSI' is: No matter what horrible things happen, nice policemen will turn up and fix everything and return it to the status quo.

When I'm working in finite serials, I always think in terms of the entire book rather than the individual episode because, by far, the vaster sector of the project's lifespan will be in complete book form rather than the singles.

I think one of the bigger lessons the Internet has taught us is that 'niche' or 'subculture' are a lot bigger than anyone ever thought.

If it's accessible by hundreds of millions of people, then it's as mainstream as it gets.

I think the New Aesthetic is a series of observations. I think most of the trouble people have had with it comes from a misunderstanding of it as a movement.

I try not to get involved in the business of prediction. It's a quick way to look like an idiot.

If you write any kind of fiction about America, you immediately have to start doing some research about guns, so in some ways, 'Gun Machine' is just the culmination of 20 years of reading about guns.

Comics is still my first love. But I always did other kinds of writing, too, so I think of myself as a writer first.

Learning to write comics is, in fact, so bloody difficult because it's such a weird form that it does actually make you a bit more adaptable for other forms.

Here's the thing about Apple technology: once you own a piece, you want to use it.

On the evidence I have on hand at home, social media isn't killing our children. It isn't killing families, either, because the constant long bloody phone calls that parents complained to their teenagers about in decades past are gone.

I'd like to recover some of the strangeness and wonder of consideration of the future.

In general, I don't like L.A. all that much, but it has wonderful parts.

I've always moved between media. Some ideas just work better in some media than others.

I can be collaborative, for instance, in situations where I go and study the artist's work before I start writing. Then I can at least try to write towards their style.

I think blogging is a muscle that most people wear out.

I try to read a Kindle Single a week, but I'm getting bad at that. I usually have a few books on the go.

I live on my phone: I have a bunch of news and informational apps on there.

If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?

I am a messiah. Ask anyone on the Internet.

The things I have sold to film, I've sold because I was happy to rent out the right to adapt those works. Some things, I haven't sold to film, because I was less interested in having no control over the adaptation.

I was originally going to train as a journalist, passing a series of exams that winnowed ten thousand applicants down to one hundred places on a National Union of Journalists course.

You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism.

It's always difficult with the superhero stuff because you're working with characters who have been written by 100 to 200 people over the past 20 years, at least, so they never sound the same or act the same. The best approach is to try to draw the best fitting line through all of the interpretations.

It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.

Chris Claremont once said of Alan Moore, "if he could plot, we'd all have to get together and kill him." Which utterly misses the most compelling part of Alan's writing, the way he develops and expresses ideas and character. Plot does not define story. Plot is the framework within which ideas are explored and personalities and relationships are unfolded.

Scotch whisky is made from barley and the morning dew on angel's nipples.

I want a tattoo over my heart that reads TRY HARDER YOU LAZY PARAMEDIC SHITBAG OR I WILL HAUNT YOUR BEDROOM FOREVER

The book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore's best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It's hard to describe just how much better the book is. It's like, "If the movie was an episode of Battlestar Galactica with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is Citizen Kane with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end." That's how much better it is.

Read comics. All comics. And then cut them open to steal their power.

Listen to the Chair Leg of Truth! It does not lie!

Los Angeles had no culture of its own, just a large collection of misreadings of the artistic histories of other, proper cities.

Journalism is just a gun. It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world.

What? I bring joy to the world. I am filled with mirth and sunlight. Also, I am Batman.

Be authentic to your dreams. Be authentic to your own idea about yourself. Grind away at your own minds and bodies until you become your own invention. Be Mad Scientists.

Wolves ate even mighty hunters, for there was no honor or code among predators, and everyone's guts steam the same way when torn open on a cold night.

Dance like you're stamping on a human face forever, love like you've been in a serious car crash that minced the front of your brain, stab like no one can arrest you, and live like there's no such thing as God.

The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species.

Writing is basically a job for people who like punching themselves in the face, I’m pretty sure.

Don't live with writers. Writers are bastards.

There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long— PEOPLE. No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened. It's people that kill every revolution.

By four o'clock, I've discounted suicide in favor of killing everyone else in the entire world instead.

What if I left my memory in the future and I have to catch up to it?

Tradition - one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking.

That means that the universe is two-dimensional. Matter, energy, time, you, me and the floor are holograms.

Drinking is fun! It makes me feel horrible and sexy!

If contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it

Magic is the cheat codes for the world.

You must remember that the common criminal will always join the armed forces for, if nothing else, regular meals and expert training in the use of guns.

good morning sinners. vampiric red bull intake in pub smoking compound commenced. day of heavy brain-fingering ahead.

I was having a mildly paranoid day, mostly due to the fact that the mad priest lady from over the river had taken to nailing weasels to my front door again.

My neck and shoulders are killing me. Hard to focus on writing about murder, doom, shagging, our hopeless future & other comedy etc etc.

Stephen King says that if you forget an idea, then it can't have been any good. He means he, not you. You are not Stephen King. Do not attempt to emulate Stephen King at home.

Its a strange world. Lets keep it that way.

He was in blue jeans and a work shirt, which is another weird quirk of Rich Old Men. Just one of the guys here. Blue jeans and a work shirt, salt of the earth, working man like yourself. Like they're somehow uncomfortable about being rich enough to sleep in a bed made of vaginas being pulled around the town at night by a fleet of gold-covered midgets.

I want vasopressin, washed caffeine, Jumpstart, ginkgo biloba, guarana, and any intelligence enhancer introduced in the last five years.

Unless you turn out to be a shining and ballistic genius, then, trust me, if you want to do this then you're going to be spending the next few years doing little else. This is a thing you do at a table with a notebook and a keyboard, and there's no getting away from it. Put in the hours. You don't get to turn off 'being a writer.'

Elijah Snow: 'Who have you pissed off this time, John?' John Stone: 'Sumatran robot death sluts -- Dammit, ONE of these buttons fires the atomic death biter --

Santa Monica's only walkable if death is no hurdle. The air's the wrong colour. People put sunglasses on their dogs. It's a hideous place where humans are not welcome and those who stay suffer eight kinds of brain damage.