Larry Niven Quotes

“What the hell is this?” Acacia asked.
Tammi examined a necklace of human teeth. “Looks like a cross between a santería minimart and a head shop.”

In certain video games, it is impossible to win. All you can do is survive as long as you can, piling up points, until you are eventually dragged down and killed.
Much like life itself?

Nice to know that he had the gods on his side. Better make sure the lawyers were there, too.

Whatever benefits voodoo conferred, intellectual agility was not among them.

It was a bad omen. Glitches were a lot like cockroaches. If you didn’t catch them in time, they’d scuttle off into someplace dark and warm and begin to breed.

We don’t break rules, but we bend the hell out of them.

Isn’t the history of human interaction the conversion of neighbors into enemies? Or into nonhumans, that we might deprive them of said chattels, or life itself?

One bad, stupid decision could twist a life completely out of true.

“I didn’t know you were such a fighter,” Eviane said.
“Yeah, well, neither did I.”
She smiled shyly.
“Does that make a big difference?” he asked hesitantly.
“Always,” she said. She stared at that bank of fog as if it concealed answers to every important question. “Oh, girls say that they want strong sensitive men. When we can’t find both, we settle for strong.”
Some part of him resented that. “Evolution in action?”
She nodded. “Sure. Deep down inside, we all know that something like this could happen. That the civilization we’d spent so much time and money building up could all come toppling down. And if it did, what would get us through is strength.”
“Not just physical strength, though.”

“That’s pretty minor. What kind of Gods are these?”
“Petty, like all Gods. On the other hand, there’s no penalty at all for masturbation.”
“I’m changing religions,” Kevin said positively.

“What’s it like being dead?” Hebert asked.
“Not bad, really,” Wood Owl answered after a moment’s consideration. “Like waiting for a tax refund, only slower.”

“Last coffee I had was on the tube out from Denver.” He made a face.
Hippogryph was willing. “That bad?”
“Let’s put it this way. I had the concierge send it out to a lab. Got a call back saying ‘Congratulations, your moose is pregnant.’”

I want a scotch and water. If I can’t have that, leave out the water.

Two thousand years of civilization does not undo a million years of genetics.

“Ah…if it’s not a glitch, and Welles seems certain that it’s not a glitch, then…what is it?”
“A glitch. People who say that they have all the bugs usually haven’t turned over enough rocks.”