Larry Niven Quotes

The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation.

Ethics change with technology.

SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.

The human species really could have faced global thermonuclear war. During seventy years of Cold War we grew used to it.

There were timelines branching and branching, a mega-universe of universes, millions more every minute. Billions? Trillions? The universe split every time someone made a decision. Split, so that every decision ever made could go both ways. Every choice made by every man, woman, and child was reversed in the universe next door.

Everything starts as somebody's daydream.

In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

In hindsight it may even seem inevitable that a socialist society will starve when it runs out of capitalists.

You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.

We learn only to ask more questions.

It's very difficult for a black man to get out of South-Central Los Angeles, and get out civilized....The only men I know who have escaped, all began reading Robert Heinlein at age ten.

One mark of a good officer, he remembered, was the ability to make quick decisions. If they happen to be right, so much the better.

The Gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.

As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population; in the next generation it's a quarter; after that it's a childhood disease.

I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.

I've got five or six unpublished stories kicking around looking for somebody to buy them.

I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.

Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

There is no cause so good or noble that it will not attract fuggheads; and the fuggheads will get all the press.

Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.

And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.

Anything beats an expensive stack of paper.

Bruce Sterling is one terrific writer and he's relatively new, but I don't know how long he's been doing it; he probably doesn't need the publicity anymore!

I have a kind of psychic invisibility. As long as I can stay scared, I can keep people from seeing me. That's what we have to count on.

The best advice I was ever given was on my twenty-first birthday when my father said, Son, here's a million dollars. Don't lose it.

Boredom is my worst enemy. It's killed a lot of my friends, but it won't get me. When I get bored, I go risk my life somewhere.

Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.

Love was a delicious blend of warm and cold. There was comfort in making love. It solved no problems: but one could run away from problems.

Once every hundred years, the Los Angeles smog rolls away for a single night, leaving the air as clean as interstellar space. That way the gods can see if Los Angeles is still there. If it is, they roll the smog back so they won't have to look at it.

The Product of Freedom and Security is a constant (F X S = k). Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naive.

I don't have a strong interest in history.

My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.

In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up.

Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently.

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program.

That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.

Sometimes there's no point in giving up.

How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?

There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.

Fear is the brother of hate.

Any damn fool can predict the past.

Never fire a laser at a mirror.

If one must explain a magic trick, one should do so after the show is over.

For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt. One who marries six times in ten years won't change jobs. One who moves often to serve his company will maintain a stable marriage. A woman chained to one home and family may redecorate frantically or take a lover or go to many costume parties.

In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.

Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.

A civilization has the ethics it can afford

I am trying to prevent a bloodbath. Is that clear enough for you? I'm trying to prevent a civil war that could kill half the people in this world.

Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes.

Never tell a computer to forget it.