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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.'”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“When television began, it modeled itself after radio. Many early television programs were radio programs first. 'My Favorite Wife,' 'The Jack Benny Show,' 'Burns and Allen,' 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents.'”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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 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.”