David Gerrold
The most useless job in the world is that of the critic. That is a prejudiced statement. I admit it. I'm prejudiced. I hate critics. ... And now, as the saying goes (yesterday, I couldn't even spell critik), and now I are one.Collection: Jobs
Only people who haven't lived through a war advocate it so eagerly.Collection: War
Incompetency fed on itself.Collection: Feds
You can tell a lot about a civilization by the quality of the people found in its jails.Collection: Civilization
We have this sacred cow in our society that what the majority of people want is rightbut is it? Our populace can't really be informed, not the majority of themmost people vote the way they have been manipulated and by the way they have responded to that manipulationthey are working out their own patterns of wishful thinking on the social environment in which they live.Collection: Thinking
Adolescence is that time in your life when you discover your ability to be depressed.Collection: Over You
Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the future, with no possible chance of escape.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Kissing
Star Trek' is the McDonald's of science fiction; it's fast food storytelling. Every problem is like every other problem. They all get solved in an hour. Nobody ever gets hurt, and nobody needs to care. You give up an hour of your time, and you don't really have to get involved. It's all plastic.Collection: Hurt
A work of art is an act of love. Critics are crab lice.Collection: Art
I've always felt that anyone who wants to talk about my private life is only demonstrating the paucity of his/her imagination when there are so many more important and exciting things to discuss.Collection: Imagination
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.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Sweet
You cannot avoid mortality. But you can choose your way of meeting it. And that is the most that any man can hope for.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Children
Theres two tiers of science fiction: the McDonalds sci-fi like Star Trek, where they have an adventure and solve it before the last commercial, and there are books that once youve read, you never look at the world the same way again.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Stars
Imagine yourself in the scene. See what there is to be seen. Listen to the sounds. Touch the world. Smell the air. Taste it. Use all of your senses. Then evoke those experiences for the reader. If you give the audience the flavor, they'll flesh out the moment in their own imaginations.Collection: Writing
Life has a peculiar habit -- once established, it stays. Sometimes it even thrives.Collection: Peculiar