Top 70 David Gerrold Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “If you’re passing the buck, don’t ask for change.”

— David Gerrold

3. “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.”

— David Gerrold

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

— David Gerrold

5. “The secret of the universe is this: The universe doesn’t care. That part of the job is yours.”

— David Gerrold

6. “Study what you love, and youll never have to work a day in your life. Itll be one great adventure.”

— David Gerrold

7. “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.”

— David Gerrold

8. “Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations.”

— David Gerrold

9. “You cannot avoid mortality. But you can choose your way of meeting it. And that is the most that any man can hope for.”

— David Gerrold

10. “I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think.”

— David Gerrold

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

— David Gerrold

12. “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.”

— David Gerrold

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

— David Gerrold

14. “Life is full of little surprises. Time travel is full of big ones.”

— David Gerrold

15. “Adolescence is that time in your life when you discover your ability to be depressed.”

— David Gerrold

16. “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

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

— David Gerrold

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

— David Gerrold

19. “I felt like a kid at Santa Claus’s funeral.”

— David Gerrold

20. “It’s almost always dangerous to be right too soon.”

— David Gerrold

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

— David Gerrold

22. “Mom says that the music is my way of trying to get close to Dad. But she’s wrong. The music isn’t my way of getting close to Dad or anyone. It’s my way of getting away from both of them and going somewhere else. Someplace where things always resolve in the final eight bars.”

— David Gerrold

23. “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.”

— David Gerrold

24. “I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.”

— David Gerrold

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

— David Gerrold

26. “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.”

— David Gerrold

27. “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

28. “The jingling of a fat purse always commands the world.”

— David Gerrold

29. “Only people who haven’t lived through a war advocate it so eagerly.”

— David Gerrold

30. “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

31. “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

32. “Incompetency fed on itself.”

— David Gerrold

33. “A work of art is an act of love. Critics are crab lice.”

— David Gerrold

34. “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.”

— David Gerrold

35. “True genius can be identified by the fact that its expression changes the world into something it has never been before.”

— David Gerrold

36. “Doesn’t anybody ever want to talk about anything else besides ‘Star Trek?’ There were 79 episodes of the series; there were 55 different writers. I was only one of them.”

— David Gerrold

37. “The human race never solves any of its problems, it only outlives them.”

— David Gerrold

38. “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

39. “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

40. “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.”

— David Gerrold

41. “Life has a peculiar habit – once established, it stays. Sometimes it even thrives.”

— David Gerrold

42. “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

43. “The land is an endless plain of yellow and pink. Even the slightest whisper of wind sends ripples of color shimmering across the land.”

— David Gerrold

44. “Smugness was easy in a world without dust or carrion smell or craters that had been factories.”

— David Gerrold

45. “A fluff ball is a perfect pet: it exists only for your affection. You take care of it – and it purrs at you; what more do you want from a pet? A pet is a substitute infant – but multiply it by one million and it’s a parasite.”

— David Gerrold

46. “The terrible thing about death is that you don’t know you’ve died. – Or is that the terrible thing? Maybe that’s the blessing.”

— David Gerrold

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

— David Gerrold

48. “The tribbles were really made by a fellow named Wah Chang – he did much of STAR TREK’s special effects work, but he’s also well known for his work in films like Jack the Giant Killer, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, and other fantasies requiring unusual effects or animation.”

— David Gerrold

49. “When one group unites its power, those nearby must ally for protection. Then, there’s a scramble for more power, while jealousies and fears breed new hatreds, internally and externally. And finally, there’s ruin.”

— David Gerrold

50. “Dr. Obama had that same trick of looking at you so sadly that you felt sorrier for her than for yourself.”

— David Gerrold