David Gerrold > Quotes

“I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.”
― David Gerrold, A Matter for Men

“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.”
― David Gerrold

“I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think.”
― David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself

“The secret of the universe is this: The universe doesn't care. That part of the job is yours.”
― David Gerrold

“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”
― David Gerrold

“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.”
― David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself

“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.”
― David Gerrold

“I have memories - but only a fool stores his past in the future”
― David Gerrold

“I have a very simple philosophy of life:

Kindness. Ferocious, unrelenting, ruthless, committed, passionate, kindness.

Life is sacred everywhere. We all have better things to do than beat each other up.

Arguing for the exception is to invest it with energy, it's to negotiate the loophole. The commitment to kindness must be total.”
― David Gerrold

“A work of art is an act of love. Critics are crab lice.”
― David Gerrold

“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.”
― David Gerrold, A Matter for Men

“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.”
― David Gerrold, Star Hunt

“99% of all lawyers give the rest of them a bad name.”
― David Gerrold

“know a lot of people who hide out in fantasy because reality is too hard to cope with [...] Fantasy isn't about escape; it's a survival mechanism. It's a way to deal with things that are so much bigger than you are. So I think fantasy is special, something to be cherished and protected because it's a very fragile thing and without it, we're so defenseless, we're paralyzed”
― David Gerrold, The Martian Child: A Novel About a Single Father Adopting a Son

“When I was ten years old, one of my friends brought a Shaleenian kangaroo-cat to school one day. I remember the way it hopped around with quick, nervous leaps, peering at everything with its large, almost circular golden eyes.

One of the girls asked if it was a boy cat or a girl cat. Our instructor didn't know; neither did the boy who had brought it; but the teacher made the mistake of asking, 'How can we find out?' Someone piped up, 'We can vote on it!' The rest of the class chimed in with instant agreement and before I could voice my objection that some things can't be voted on, the election was held. It was decided that the Shaleenian kangaroo-cat was a boy, and forthwith, it was named Davy Crockett.

Three months later, Davy Crockett had kittens. So much for democracy.

It seems to me that if the electoral process can be so wrong about such a simple thing, isn't it possible for it to be very, very wrong on much more complex matters? 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.

It is most disturbing to me to realize that though a majority may choose a specific course of action or direction for itself, through the workings of a 'representative government,' they may be as mistaken about the correctness of such a choice as my classmates were about the sex of that Shaleenian kangaroo-cat.

I'm not so sure than an electoral government is necessarily the best.”
― David Gerrold, Star Hunt

“The fifties are a peaceful time, a quiet sleeping time between two noisy bursts of years, a blue and white time filled with sweet yellow days, music and bright smelling memories.”
― David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself

“Life is full of little surprises.
Time travel is full of big ones.”
― David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself

“I felt like a kid at Santa Claus's funeral.”
― David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself

“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.”
― David Gerrold, The Trouble with Tribbles

“Star Trek was about social justice from day one -- the stories were about the human pursuit for a better world, a better way of being, the next step up the ladder of sentience. The stories weren't about who we were going to fight, but who we were going to make friends with. It wasn't about defining an enemy -- it was about creating a new partnership. That's why when Next Gen came along, we had a Klingon on the bridge.”
― David Gerrold

“There's this thing that writers talk about--where the characters take on a life of their own and they run away with the story, taking it off to places the author never intended to go. That's what happened here.

Except, that's not what really happens. That's one of the stories that writers tell about storytelling.

What really happened was that I sat and wrote and had a conversation with myself--a conversation that wasn't possible, unless I let part of myself pretend it was someone else--a disembodied voice in the typewriter. And so I typed. I typed everything I felt and feared and worried about, everything I thought I knew, and everything else as well, the much larger domain of what I didn't know and didn't know how to figure out.

Because this, at last, was a place where I could talk to somebody about it all--and if that somebody was really me, that was okay too, because I was the guy who had to figure it out anyway. So I had all these conversations with myself--and these different parts of me talked into the keyboard. And talked and talked and talked.”
― David Gerrold, The Martian Child: A Novel About a Single Father Adopting a Son

“Somebody should have warned the Trojans. Beware of gifts bearing Greeks.”
― David Gerrold, A Matter for Men

“I had to learn to relax, that was the problem. Other people had always unnerved me because I thought they were continually judging me. How do I look? What kind of person do I seem? Is my voice firm enough? Am I really intelligent or just pedantic? Was that joke really funny, or am I making a fool of myself? I worried about the impression I was making. If I was shy, did they think I was being aloof and call me a snob? If I tried to be friendly, did they find me overbearing? I was always afraid that I was basically unlikable, so I wouldn't give anyone the chance to find out; or I tried too hard to be likable, and thereby proved that I wasn't.”
― David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself

“My body may be male or it may be female, but I am neither — I am me.”
― David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself

“Ahead in the distance, scattered clusters of pink-trees waved in the wind. They stuck out of the yellow sea, towering thirty or forty meters high. The pink-trees are very thin, they don’t have low branches, only high ones with broad leaves of orange and red, sometimes shading all the way down to deep purple, sometimes so dark they look black. But their long necks are mostly pink that is why they are called pink- trees.

They aren’t really trees. Even though they are rooted, they’re part animal, and instead of bark they have layers of pale skin, thin as paper.”
― David Gerrold, Hella

“The only difference between a writer and a crazy person is that a writer gets paid for it.”
― David Gerrold

“I don't like classifying people by who they fall in love with.”
― David Gerrold, The Martian Child: A Novel About a Single Father Adopting a Son

“Timing. It’s about timing.”
― David Gerrold, Hella

“The past is the future. The future is the past. There’s no difference between the two and either can be changed. I’m flashing across a series of alternate worlds, creating and destroying a new one every time I bounce. The universe is infinite. And so are the possibilities of my life.”
― David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself

“Don’t volunteer anything. Let the other person do all the talking. Most people can’t stand silence, so they have to fill it up with words.”
― David Gerrold, Hella