Screenwriters From The United States

"Free speech gives people the right to knock who and what I love; it also gives me the right to rebut."

"I found Robert A. Heinlein in back issues of Astounding, and also in The Saturday Evening Post, and I read everything of his I could find. I was completely hooked on his "juveniles": Space Cadet. Red Planet. Starman Jones. Between Planets. Farmer in the Sky. Wonderful stories, and the only thing "juvenile" about them was that he took the trouble to explain what was happening. Robert once told me that young people want to know how things work, and you can tell them more in a "juvenile" than you can in an adult novel. In any event I devoured everything of his I could find, through high school, the army, college, and I couldn’t have cared less that many were "juveniles". They were wonderful. I met Robert Heinlein years later, and through some kind of rare magic we became instant friends. We corresponded for a decade. In those days I was an engineering psychologist, operations research specialist, and systems engineer in aerospace. Most of my work was military aerospace, but I did get to work on Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. We were helping to make the dream come true! I went from there to a professorship, and then into political management and city government. Robert visited me when I was working for Mayor Sam Yorty. "You probably don’t know this," he said, "but my political career ended when Yorty beat me for the Democratic nomination to the State Assembly." When I finally decided to get out of politics, academia, and the aerospace industry and try my hand at writing, Mr. Heinlein was enormously helpful. Years later, when I was an established writer, I asked him how I could pay him back. "You can’t," he said. "You don’t pay back, you pay forward." I never forgot that, just as I never forgot the wonderful things his ‘juvenile’ stories did for me."

"Heinlein presents us, in terms of his sources and influences with a rope of many strands and the strength of the whole is in the multiplicity of the strands. To lift one strand out and examine it has two immediate effects: it magnifies the relative importance out of proportion to its place in the whole; and it weakens the whole. For all the good and interesting use Heinlein made of his encounter with Cabell, he was not a disciple or even a "Cabell minor." Rather, he used Cabellian materials to make his own figure in the world, and in so doing he has given the Biography of the Life of Manuel a Life of its own, flowing into literary history. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery — but in literature, transformation is the only form of progeny."

"Look at somebody like Heinlein: many of his late books are just tirades."

"In terms of the future, my Anishinaabemowin language has a word, kobade—a very small word, but in reality an extremely sophisticated concept. The idea is that everything that’s in the past and the future is also in the now, but it’s not as simplistic as that. It’s more like there exists a spiral of intergenerational connections, so that even if you are in the present you have spirit persons at your side; they can be ancient spirits, considered to be from the past or from the future. Kobade is the recognition of all persons, not just human persons, and of all the intergenerational connections that we have, which are never linear, but spiral. In my language some people may describe it as a chain, wherein we’re connected to each other, so that the future is always containing the past and the present; I don’t use the word “chain” because I work in Black Studies and it just feels heavy and inappropriate. I use the image of a spiral. This is very different from the former science fiction model, what was called “extrapolative fiction.” This word came directly from Robert A. Heinlein, who took the idea from mathematical equations, where you pull something out of the past or the present and draw this imagined plausible future from one dot to another. That’s an extremely linear concept, too simplistic to allow other forms of thinking. For example, we just don’t arbitrarily choose a certain point in the past when writing and developing characters; there can be all kinds of remnants of pasts, presents, and futures."

"Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation."

"Some people insist that “mediocre” is better than “best.” They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can’t fly. They despise brains because they have none. Pfah!"

"You're in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish."

"I missed my slipstick. Dad says that anyone who can't use a slide rule is a cultural illiterate and should not be allowed to vote. Mine is a beauty — a K&E 20-inch Log-log Duplex Decitrig. Dad surprised me with it after I mastered a ten-inch polyphase. We ate potato soup that week — but Dad says you should always budget luxuries first. I knew where it was. Home on my desk."

"When I don’t understand, I have an unbearable itch to know why."

"We lived like that “Happy Family“ you sometimes see in traveling zoos: a lion caged with a lamb. It is a startling exhibit but the lamb has to be replaced frequently."

"Daddy says that, in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem."

"Television leaves no external scars."

"There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe."

"“Dr. Russell, I concede that Washington has an atrocious climate. But you will have air-conditioned offices.” “With clocks, no doubt. And secretaries. And soundproofing.” “Anything you want, doctor.” “The point is, Mr. Secretary, I don’t want them. This household has no clocks. Nor calendars. Once I had a large income and a larger ulcer; I now have a small income and no ulcer. I stay here.” “But the job needs you.” “The need is not mutual.”"

"You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me — Jane — here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!"

"I glanced at the ring on my finger. The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever … I know where I came from — but where did all you zombies come from?"

"A Paradox May Be Paradoctored."

"If at Last You Do Succeed, Never Try Again."

"Never Do Yesterday What Should Be Done Tomorrow."

"I dictated my report; forty recruitments all okayed by the Psych Bureau — counting my own, which I knew would be okayed. I was here, wasn't I? Then I taped a request for assignment to operations; I was sick of recruiting."

"I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time — 10: 17 P.M. zone five, or eastern time, November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must. The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty-five years old, no taller than I am, childish features and a touchy temper. I didn't like his looks — I never had — but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep's smile."

"Life is short, but the years are long."

"A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain."

"No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any other — but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it."

"Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin."

"He was finding it ruinously expensive to be rich."

"Son, people do odd things for money, but they’ll do still more drastic things for power over money. Anybody sittin’ close to a billion credits is in danger; it’s like keeping a pet rattlesnake."

"“What can I do for you?” “Uh, is this confidential?” “Privileged, son. The word is ‘privileged.’ You don’t ask a lawyer that; he’s either honest or he ain’t. Me, I’m middlin’ honest. You take your chances.”"

"I used to wonder what it was like to be rich. Now I am and it turns out to be mostly headaches."

"But I warn you, it won’t be fun. Nobody owns a business; the business owns him. You’re a slave to it."

"“Pay, are all paymasters dishonest?” “Only the good ones.”"

"I’m not lazy, I’m efficient."

"Since Thorby had no talent he became an actor."

"He was caught in the old dilemma of the man with unintegrated values, who eats meat but would rather somebody else did the butchering."

"Most things are right or wrong only in their backgrounds; few things are good or evil in themselves. But things that are right or wrong according to their culture, really are so."

"Pop, who maintained that a wise man could not be insulted, since truth could not insult and untruth was not worthy of notice."

"“Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist’s view, ’justice’ is a search for workable customs.”"

"With rank goeth privileges—so it ever shall be. But also with it go responsibility and obligation, always more onerous than the privileges are pleasant."

"“Do you know what an anthropologist is?” “Uh, I am sorry, ma’am—Margaret.” “It’s simpler than it sounds. An anthropologist is a scientist who studies how people live together.” Thorby looked doubtful. “This is a science?” “Sometimes I wonder. Actually, Thorby, it is a complicated study, because the patterns that men work out to live together seem unlimited.”"

"But mathematics Thorby saw no use in, other than the barbaric skill of counting money. But presently he learned that mathematics need not have use; it was a game, like chess but more fun."

"As Thorby learned to use his mind, he found that he liked to; he developed an insatiable appetite for the printed page."

"If you lie to me, I’ll catch you…eventually. Lying to other people is your business, but I can tell you this: once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind."

"The future is better than the past. Despite the crepehangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands...with tools...with horse sense and science and engineering."

"They made the predictable fuss about taking a cat into a room and an autobellhop is not responsive to bribes—hardly an improvement. But the assistant manager had more flexibility in his synapses; He listened to reason as long as it was crisp and rustled."

"“Er, will your grandmother tell that fib for you?” “I guess so. Yes, I'm sure she will. She says people have to tell little white fibs or else people couldn’t stand each other. But she says fibs were meant to be used, not abused.” “She sounds like a sensible person.”"

"I had taken a partner once before—but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open."

"By the laws of statistics we could probably approximate just how unlikely it is that it would happen. But people forget—especially those who ought to know better, such as yourself—that while the laws of statistics tell you how unlikely a particular coincidence is, they state just as firmly that coincidences do happen."

"I counted to ten slowly, using binary notation."

"An invention is something that was “impossible” up to then—that’s why governments grant patents."