Quote

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'.

Larry Niven

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Larry Niven
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: April 30
Author
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Laurence van Cott Niven
Mistake
Technical
Opinion
Literary
Author
Term
Opinions
Belief
Beliefs
Character
Idiot
Characters
Novel

More quotes by Larry Niven

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Anything beats an expensive stack of paper.
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If one must explain a magic trick, one should do so after the show is over.
Larry Niven
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Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing.
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I've got five or six unpublished stories kicking around looking for somebody to buy them.
Larry Niven
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We should not have assumed that a political space station could be built.
Larry Niven
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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.
Larry Niven
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Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.
Larry Niven
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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!
Larry Niven
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The Product of Freedom and Security is a constant (F X S = k). Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naive.
Larry Niven
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And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.
Larry Niven
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The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim
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We learn only to ask more questions.
Larry Niven
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My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.
Larry Niven
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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.
Larry Niven
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But... watching Steven Barnes taught me to treat my life like an art form.
Larry Niven
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I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.
Larry Niven
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The Gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.
Larry Niven
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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.
Larry Niven
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That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
Larry Niven
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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.
Larry Niven