"Did you ever want to set someone's head on fire, just to see what it looked like? Did you ever stand in the street and think to yourself, I could make that nun go blind just by giving her a kiss? Did you ever lay out plans for stitching babies and stray cats into a Perfect New Human? Did you ever stand naked surrounded by people who want your gleaming sperm, squirting frankincense, soma and testosterone from every pore? If so, then you're the bastard who stole my drugs Friday night. And I'll find you. Oh, yes."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 5: Lonely City)

"Drinking is fun! It makes me feel horrible and sexy!"
— Warren Ellis

"“You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism."
— Warren Ellis

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

"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."
— Warren Ellis

"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."
— Warren Ellis

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

"You want to know about voting. I'm here to tell you about voting. Imagine you're locked in a huge underground night-club filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pitbulls for fun. And you ain't allowed out until you all vote on what you're going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch "Republican Party Reservation". They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand new sexual organs you did not even know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That's voting. You're welcome."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard)

"Writing comics? Still the best job in the world. I sit around all day making shit up and see it illustrated, in 99% of cases, exactly as I imagined it -- if not better. I've been doing this a long time now, and I'm going to do it until I die. Which probably won't be long, given the constant insane deadline pressure."
— Warren Ellis

""Writer's block? I've heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn't a writer anymore. I'm sorry, but the job is getting up in the fucking morning and writing for a living.""
— Warren Ellis

" You're probably wondering why there's never any good news.
I mean, I've been doing this job a few months now. I've been soaking up the paper every week, same as you, and watching the same newsfeeds as you. I got the same list burned into the front of my head as you. Death. Horror. Bad sex. Living nightmares. Each day a little further down the spiral.
There's never any good news because they know you.
I mean, here's the top of today's column that I discarded: I had a really good time last night down the bar with my assistant and some cheerfully doomed sex fiends of our acquaintance.
No one ever sold newspapers by telling you the truth; life just ain't that bad."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 0: Tales of Human Waste)

""Tradition": one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 4: The New Scum)

"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."
— Warren Ellis

"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."
— Warren Ellis

"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."
— Warren Ellis

"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."
— Warren Ellis

"There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long -- people.

No matter how big the idea is they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened.

It's people that kill every revolution."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 1: Back on the Street)

"There was a time when I liked a good riot. Put on some heavy old street clothes that could stand a bit of sidewalk-scraping, infect myself with something good and contagious, then go out and stamp on some cops. It was great, being nine years old. "
— Warren Ellis

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

"Listen to the Chair Leg of Truth! It does not lie!"
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 9: The Cure)

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

"Ain't no Jesus in Snowtown, Detective."
— Warren Ellis

"Listen, when some asshole pulls a gun on me, he loses his right to a warm milky drink and fucking cuddles, okay?"
— Warren Ellis (Black Summer Limited Edition)

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

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