I am anti-entropy. My work is foursquare for chaos. I spend my life
personally, and my work professionally, keeping the soup boiling.
Gadfly is what they call you when you are no longer dangerous; I much
prefer troublemaker, malcontent, desperado. I see myself as a
combination of Zorro and Jiminy Cricket. My stories go out from here
and raise hell. From time to time some denigrator or critic with
umbrage will say of my work, "He only wrote that to shock." I smile
and nod. Precisely.
-- Harlan Ellison. Quoted by Stephen King in his book
Danse Macabre (1981), p.406.