Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things.

Harlan Ellison
About This Quote

Some people believe that they get their ideas from people saying something and then later deciding to use those words in a different way. This is commonly known as “word-spinning.” For example, if I heard someone say: “I play the guitar and my dog is a bass.” My mind would jump to the conclusion that he played an instrument and his dog was a bass. The problem with this theory is that it is also possible that I could have heard: “I play the guitar and my dog is a bass” and I just interpreted it as: “I play the guitar and my dog is a dog.”

Some Similar Quotes
  1. And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. - Sylvia Plath
  2. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. - Ray Bradbury
  3. The road to hell is paved with adverbs. - Stephen King
  4. Fiction is the truth inside the lie. - Stephen King
  5. The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But... - Stephen King
More Quotes By Harlan Ellison
  1. I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can...
  2. The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
  3. It is not merely enough to love literature if one wishes to spend one's life as a writer. It is a dangerous undertaking on the most primitive level. For, it seems to me, the act of writing with serious intent involves enormous personal risk. It...
  4. Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things.
  5. When you're all alone out there, on the end of the typewriter, with each new story a new appraisal by the world of whether you can still get it up or not, arrogance and self-esteem and deep breathing are all you have. It often looks...
Related Topics