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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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Larry Niven
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: April 30
Author
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Laurence van Cott Niven
Trick
Tricks
Explain
Magic
Show
Shows
Must

More quotes by Larry Niven

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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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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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A civilization has the ethics it can afford
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
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I'm not predicting I just love playing with superconductors.
Larry Niven
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Stupidity is always a capital crime.
Larry Niven
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Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
Larry Niven
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In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
Larry Niven
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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.
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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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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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.
Larry Niven
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How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?
Larry Niven
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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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But... watching Steven Barnes taught me to treat my life like an art form.
Larry Niven
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I don't have a strong interest in history.
Larry Niven
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Anything beats an expensive stack of paper.
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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I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.
Larry Niven