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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
Magic
Show
Shows
Must
Trick
Tricks
Explain

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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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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My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.
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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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The Gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.
Larry Niven
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I do suspect that privacy was a passing fad.
Larry Niven
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We learn only to ask more questions.
Larry Niven
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The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim
Larry Niven
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Everything starts as somebody's daydream.
Larry Niven
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In a collaboration, each author will do 75% of the work.
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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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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I've got five or six unpublished stories kicking around looking for somebody to buy them.
Larry Niven
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A civilization has the ethics it can afford
Larry Niven
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The majority is always sane.
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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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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Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.
Larry Niven
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I don't have a strong interest in history.
Larry Niven
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Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
Larry Niven