Quotes from David Brin

The fundamental premise of sci-fi is not spaceships and lasers - it's that children can learn from the mistakes of their parents.

But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens.

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

The health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction, since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie.

Those who use 'Correlation is not the same as causation' as a magic incantation to dismiss all fact-using professions are fools holding a lit match in one hand and an open gas can in the other, screaming, 'One has nothing to do with the other!'

When we see a strong correlation, and the matter at-hand is something with major health or safety or security implications, then we are behooved to at least begin taking preliminary precautions in case the correlation proves to be causative.

'Existence' is about the world of roughly 2050, and terrible things have happened, but guess what? People have reacted to the terrible things by coping, as they always have.

For every Steven King, there are a dozen guys like me who make a good living. For every David Brin, there are a dozen authors who have managed to make it their day job. For each of them, there are a dozen more for whom writing is a terrific supplement.

Life is not fair... Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.

When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.

My education and background thoroughly inform my writing.

One of life's joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.

It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.

We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?

I really respect and admire Tolkien. I think he was the most honest of the Romantics.

Change is the very fabric of our time.

Science fiction is the field that explores how change can affect us, for well or ill.

Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture, bringing it down. It's happened many times in the past. It could happen to us.

As a fellow science fiction author, Heinlein largely raised me, and I resent it when some folks lazily dismiss Heinlein as a 'right winger' or even 'fascist.'

Strutting and preening is, in fact, the surest sign of an inferiority complex.

Nothing expresses lack of inner confidence like bluster.

Not all SF or fantasy has to inspire new scientists and engineers.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.