Quotes by David Gerrold - Page 2

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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Kids
War
Invasion
Scary
Writing
Version
Favorite Movies
George
Haunted
Pal
Worlds
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Giving Up
Hurt
Stars
Copy Quote
'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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Fast Food
Hurt
Plastic
Science Fiction
Hour
Mcdonald
Solved
Star Trek
Trek
Copy Quote
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 / Screenwriter
Home
Crazy
Moving
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Fiction Stories
Night
Sky
Copy Quote
'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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Relation
Science Fiction
Sky
Stories
Wonder
Anyone Else
Essential
Question
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Science
Approach
Arrogant
Dollars
Justify
Little Bit
Millions
Science Fiction
Stars
Thinking
Writing
Good Enough Me
Tv
Star
Episode
Expense
Science Good Me
Hundreds
Hundreds Of Thousands
Millions Of Dollars
Screen
Star Trek
Thousands
Trek
Tv Show
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
War
Book
Children
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Bandwidth
Internet
Moving
Video
Adapt
Capabilities
Each Time
Finally
Formats
Medium
Pictures
Preexisting
Text
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Movies
Interesting
Internet
Inventing
Media
New Media
Radio
Records
Technological
Television
Itself
Industrial
One Of The Things
Reinvent
Shift
Watching
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Adoption
Epic
Son
War Great Man
Beyond
Folded
Martian
Notice
Copy Quote
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 / Screenwriter
Kindness
Commitment
Philosophy
Simple
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Amazing
Medical
Men
Technology
Century
Colour
Industry
Internet
Medical Technology
Moon
Orbit
Phones
Primitive
Agricultural
Beginning
Cell
Cell Phones
To The Moon
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Driving
Jet
London
Be Different
Copy
Popular
Pick
Plane
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
People
Thinking
Work Out
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Brain
Iron
Thinking
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Time
Long
Past
Copy Quote
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 / Screenwriter
Boys
Hands
Kissing
Copy Quote
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.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Space
Stars
Writing
Copy Quote
Christianity has held back any further advances in human consciousness for the past thousand years. And for the past century it's been in direct conflict with its illegitimate offspring, Communism (again with a capital C). Both ask the individual to sacrifice his self-interest to the higher goals of the organization. (Which is okay by me as long as it's voluntary; but as soon as either becomes too big - and takes on that damned capital C - they stop asking for cooperation and start demanding it.) Any higher states of human enlightenment have been sacrificed between these two monoliths.
David Gerrold / Screenwriter
Past
Sacrifice
Self
Copy Quote

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David Gerrold Quotes - Page 2

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