David Gerrold Quotes

You aren’t really jumping through time, that’s the illusion; what you’re actually doing is leaving one timestream and jumping to—maybe even creating—another. The second one is identical to the one you just left, including all of the changes you made in it—up to the instant of your appearance. At that moment, simply by the fact of your existence in it, the second timestream becomes a different timestream. You are the difference.

You cannot avoid mortality. But you can choose your way of meeting it. And that is the most that any man can hope for.
Live well, my son.

Now you see why I hate to leave my lab. It tires me out too much to have to do other people’s thinking for them.

Auberson’s first impression of the man was of eight pounds of potatoes in a ten-pound sack.

I also know that 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.

“You could call it that,” Auberson sighed. It wouldn’t be correct, but you could call it that.

Life must be a daring adventure or it is nothing at all. It's always a choice between joy and despair. I tried despair. Joy is more fun.

Life is full of little surprises.
Time travel is full of big ones.

The sullen power of great violence forged into shapes of metal is always ugly.

I’ve always suspected that Judas was the most faithful of the apostles, and that his betrayal of Jesus was not a betrayal at all, simply a test to prove that Christ could not be betrayed. The way I see it, Judas hoped and expected that Christ would have worked some kind of miracle and turned away those soldiers when they came for him. Or perhaps he would not die on the cross. Or perhaps—well, never mind. In any case, Jesus didn’t do any of these things, probably because he was not capable of it. You see, I’ve also always believed that Christ was not the son of God, but just a very very good man, and that he had no supernatural powers at all, just the abilities of any normal human being. When he died, that’s when Judas realized that he had not been testing God at all—he’d been betraying a human being, perhaps the best human being. Judas’s mistake was in wanting too much to believe in the powers of Christ. He wanted Christ to demonstrate to everyone that he was the son of God, and he believed his Christ could do it—only his Christ wasn’t the son of God and couldn’t do it, and he died. You see, it was Christ who betrayed Judas—by promising what he couldn’t deliver. And Judas realized what he had done and hung himself. That’s my interpretation of it, Auberson—not the traditional, I’ll agree, but it has more meaning to me. Judas’s mistake was in believing too hard and not questioning first what he thought were facts. I don’t intend to repeat that mistake.

It was not an unfamiliar sensation, but it was strange to feel it in the daytime. Mostly, it was a nighttime visitor, an ever-gentle gnawing at the back of the head that had to be always guarded against, lest its realization sweep forth with a cold familiar rush. It was the sudden startling glimpse over the edge—the realization that death is inevitable, that it happens to everyone, that it would happen to me too; that someday, someday, the all-important I (the center of the whole thing) would cease to exist. Would stop. Would end. Would no longer be. Nothing. Nobody. Finished. Death.

The way I heard it, a contract is a list of all the ways two people don’t trust each other.

There isn’t a tool built that can’t be used as a weapon.

Don’t push the on-button if you don’t know where the off-button is.

Love isn't what you get. It's what you create.