Quotes from Larry Niven

Louis's excitement was growing unbearable. Was this really what he had needed all along? Not the droud and wire, but the risk of his life to prove its value! Louis adjusted his flying belt and dropped over the railing.

so that the ship was falling toward the sun; and then he swung the nose inward and began to increase velocity

Then you can go home to the puppeteer worlds and tell them that mucking with human breeding habits is a chancy business. Tell them that enough Teela Browns could make a hash of all the laws of probability. Even basic physics is nothing more than probability at the atomic level. Tell them the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with.

Did I still remember how to let my mind play?

One must travel all the way to the center. To know and hate evil is one path to knowing good.

Danger doesn't exist for Teela Brown

The priest splayed his digits wide. "Herdmaster, I learn. Later I will speak." "You do not seem pleased." There was no answer. "A place of puzzles," Pastempeh-keph said. "They surrender and have not surrendered. Their tapes show rogues acting in collusion. They live neither in herds nor alone. What are they?" "What do they believe themselves to be?" Fistarteh-thuktun asked. "Perhaps that is more important.

Louis Wu hardly noticed this triumph of practicality over honor, intelligence over xenophobia.

Because she was designed human, before Nessus made her something else. Tanj him! Do you see what he did? He created god in his own image, his own idealized image, and he got Teela Brown. She's just what any puppeteer would give his soul to be. She can't be injured. She can't even be uncomfortable, unless it's for her own benefit.

Skill. She must know more anatomy than most professors. A doctorate in Prostitution? There was more to the oldest profession than met the eye. Louis Wu could recognize expertise in any field. This woman had it.

She risks her own life, Louis thought, then blames me for not getting angry. An attention-getting device? How long has she been doing it? Anyone else would die young, with a habit like that!

It does not disturb me to play a god, he said. It disturbs me to play a god badly.

The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. She'd

Why hadn't they built a lot of little Ringworlds instead?

Fear is the brother of hate. One

The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care.

Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile. But

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Matthew 7:3

GREAT SKY WOMAN  and SHADOW VALLEY, adventures set 30,000 years

Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving. A

Everything starts as somebody's daydream.

travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. - Robert Louis Stevenson

But you've never even been as far as the Moon.

Nessus sprawled bonelessly in his couch. He looked ridiculously, ludicrously comfortable.