David Gerrold Quotes

The single most important lesson of effective communication is this: Focus on clarity. Concentrate on precisions. Don't worry about constructing beautiful sentences. Beauty comes from meaning, not language. Accuracy is the most effective style of all.

Life is full of little surprises.
Time travel is full of big ones.

Somebody should have warned the Trojans. Beware of gifts bearing Greeks.

You will find it easiest to ride the avalanche in the direction it already travels.

To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer's build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The only difference between a writer and a crazy person is that a writer gets paid for it.

I think we built the right future. If it's a choice between the flying car or the Internet, tablets and smartphones, I'll take what we've got.

'The Next Generation' was a lot of fun for a while, and then it wasn't a lot of fun. The reason it wasn't a lot of fun was that this one was going to be a guaranteed hit. The original 'Star Trek' was never a guaranteed hit.

The first science fiction show on television was 'Tales Of Tomorrow' using scripts from the radio show 'X-1' which used stories from 'Galaxy Magazine' as its source material.

Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order

When we look up at the night sky and wonder, 'Is there anyone else out there?' we're also asking who we are in relation to them.

99% of all lawyers give the rest of them a bad name.

When the Internet came along, at first it was just a medium for moving text around - books first, then pictures, finally video. Each time the bandwidth expanded, so did the capabilities of the medium, and each time it happened, the Internet cannibalized preexisting formats. And each time, those formats had to adapt. Or die.

In the entire history of the human species, every tool we've invented has been to expand muscle power. All except one. The integrated circuit, the computer. That lets us use our brain power.

I mean, I tried to change, I did, everybody tries to change, Michael. Not just the queerboys. You look in the mirror and all you see is what's wrong, I'm not _this_ enough or I'm not _that_ enough, and you spend your whole life trying to fix yourself, because you just want to be okay inside your head, you know?

I know you know this, Michael, that's why you're here. You're looking for the fix. Yeah, that's why they call it a fix. Because you think you're broken. Only you're not--that broken feeling? That's normal. That's how you know you're normal. If you're not feeling it, you really are broken, that's the joke

If you're passing the buck, don't ask for change.

Only people who haven't lived through a war advocate it so eagerly.

My approach to 'Star Trek' was, 'I know science fiction, and I know screen writing.' That was very arrogant of me, but you really need to be a little bit arrogant to think that what you have to say is good enough to justify the expense of hundreds of thousands - now millions of dollars - to make an episode of the TV show.

I had always been fascinated by the whole idea that Australia was this different ecology and that when rabbits and prickly pears and other things from Europe were introduced into Australia, they ran amok.

Most people say they want justice, but they don't really want justice. They want revenge. They want to see the pain spread around equally.

In the past, a great library was the result of librarians functioning as guardians of culture, tending and caring, selecting and recommending works that maintained and nurtured a cultural heritage.

The computer has evolved into a partner, a tool, and an environment
not just in science fiction, but in the public consciousness as well. Computers are no longer malevolent iron brains that manufacture tyrannical and oppressive answers; they are not a way to think, they are a place from which to think. The computer is an environment in which answers can be sought, created, manipulated and developed.

Something went klunk. Like a nickel dropping in a soda machine. One of those small insights that explains everything. This was puberty for these boys. Adolescence. The first date, the first kiss, the first chance to hold hands with someone special. Delayed, postponed, a decade's worth of longing
while everybody around you celebrates life, you pretend, suppress, inhibit, deprive yourself of you own joy
but finally ultimately, eventually, you find a place where you can have a taste of everything denied.

The avalanche of time sweeps everything before it. Every individual instant hurtles into oblivion, drowning out the obliteration of the instant immediately preceding it, and then it too disappears under the onslaught of the next and the next and the next. When the avalanche has shuddered past for a long enough time, the perception of the past evolves. Distant events grow beyond mere history and take on the weight of legend.

I have memories - but only a fool stores his past in the future

What's interesting about the shift from an industrial age to a technological age is that we keep inventing new media: movies, records, radio, television, the Internet, and now ebooks - and one of the things that's most interesting about the invention of a new medium is watching it reinvent itself as it penetrates the culture.

We have this sacred cow in our society that what the majority of people want is right-but is it? Our populace can't really be informed, not the majority of them-most people vote the way they have been manipulated and by the way they have responded to that manipulation-they are working out their own patterns of wishful thinking on the social environment in which they live.

Morality - like velocity - is relative. The determination of it depends on what the objects around you are doing. All one can do is measure one's position in relation to them; never can one measure one's velocity or morality in terms of absolutes.

What I wish is that people would look beyond the tribbles and see I've written some other books that I really would like people to notice. There's 'The Man Who Folded Himself,' there's 'The Martian Child,' which is about my son and the adoption. There's 'The War Against The Chtorr,' which is my magnum opus, my great epic story.

The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard.

Kirk: How close will we come to the nearest Klingon outpost if we continue on our present course?
Chekov: Vun parsec, sir. Close enough to smell them.
Spock: That is illogical, ensign. Odors cannot travel through the vacuum of space.
Chekov: I vas making a little joke, sir.
Spock: Extremely little, ensign.

If you were a kid in 1955, you would pick up a copy of 'Popular Science' and it would say, 'This is the kind of car you're going to be driving in five years or in 20 years you'll be able to take a jet plane from New York to London in four hours,' or something like that. We actually got used to the idea that the future's going to be different.

You can tell a lot about a civilization by the quality of the people found in its jails.

I won't even try to predict the specifics, but I think the ebook - as a medium - could be a game-changer.

Of course life is bizarre, the more bizarre it gets, the more interesting it is. The only way to approach it is to make yourself some popcorn and enjoy the show.

Contentment is the continuing act of accepting the process of your own life.

I'm frustrated with Hollywood and television and the movies because they see science fiction as an excuse for eye candy, for lots of great special effects.

When I was a kid, my favorite movies were the George Pal version of 'War Of The Worlds,' 'Them,' and 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.' Those movies were scary! They haunted my nightmares for years, so when I started writing, I wanted to write a story that was just as big and just as scary.

If you want to be taken care and not to worry that's fine; you can join the rest of the cattle. Cattle are comfortable, that's how you recognize them. Just don't complain when they ship you off to the packing plant. They've bought and paid for the privilege. Now if you want to be free, then get this: freedom is not about being comfortable. It's about seizing and using opportunities, and using them responsibly. Freedom is not comfort. It's commitment. Commitment is the willingness to be uncomfortable.

'Who are we?' And to me that's the essential question that's always been in science fiction. A lot of science fiction stories are - at their very best - evocations of that question. When we look up at the night sky and wonder, 'Is there anyone else out there?' we're also asking who we are we in relation to them.

Notice how every science fiction movie or television show starts with a shot of the location where the story is about to occur. Movies that take place in outer space always start with a shot of stars and a starship. Movies that take place on another world always start with a shot of that planet. This is to let you know where you are. Novels and stories start the same way. You have to give the reader a sense of where he is and what's happening as quickly as possible. You don't want to start the story by confusing the reader.

In the 20th century, we had a century where at the beginning of the century, most of the world was agricultural and industry was very primitive. At the end of that century, we had men in orbit, we had been to the moon, we had people with cell phones and colour televisions and the Internet and amazing medical technology of all kinds.

I felt like a kid at Santa Claus's funeral.

You have a billion people who know 'Tribbles' and only half a million who know my novel 'The Man Who Folded Himself,' which is one of my better-known books.

Somewhere there exists all the possible variations of all the possible people I could be. I could be any of them- but I cannot be all. I can only be one of the variations. I will be the variation of myself that pleases me the most.

Science fiction is a unique literature. Science fiction is the first literature that says, 'Tomorrow is going to be different than yesterday, it's going to be a lot different.'

It's almost always dangerous to be right too soon.

The jingling of a fat purse always commands the world.

Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the future, with no possible chance of escape.