140 Quotes by Larry Niven

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.

Any damn fool can predict the past.

We learn only to ask more questions.

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.

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.

Everything starts as somebody's daydream.

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

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 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.