James Nicoll Quotes

#1. Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences.

James Nicoll

#2. Gun-wielding recluse gunned down by local police" isn't the epitaph I want. I am hoping for "Witnesses reported the sound up to two hundred kilometers away" or "Last body part finally located".

James Nicoll

#3. Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts

James Nicoll

#4. Manitoba ... Not sure what to do about them. Restock the province with megafauna and encourage tourism, I think. How quickly can we breed back the saber-toothed cats?

James Nicoll

#5. English doesn't borrow from other languages. english follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.

James Nicoll

#6. Most of my scars are not fire-related and I no longer say "I know what I am doing" at critical moments.

James Nicoll

#7. My grandfather for example only died twice, once during the war and once in the 1980s.

James Nicoll

#8. I can't help but notice that everytime I fly somewhere, other people's planes fall out of the sky.

James Nicoll

#9. After enough concussions the head injuries blur together.

James Nicoll

#10. Deadly nightshade is the only plant I have ever been able to get to grow for me.

James Nicoll

#11. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

James Nicoll

#12. It's bad to wake up and see a large cat in mid-leap from the rough vicinity of the ceiling.

James Nicoll

#13. Never bring a gun to a fight where the other guy has a time-machine and tomorrow's newspapers.

James Nicoll

#14. [Elizabeth Moon's] antagonists are always evil moustache-twirlers. She could write a book about a golf open and the main rival to the hero would turn out to have clubs made from compressed kittens.

James Nicoll

#15. I think once you start eating people you should stop claiming to be a vegetarian, even if you only eat bad people.

James Nicoll

#16. About Antrax by Terry Brooks: I wonder if he's planning a book called SRS? Or F'lu?

James Nicoll

#17. I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface.

James Nicoll

#18. Romeo and Juliet *died*. I always liked that in a teen romance story.

James Nicoll

#19. Ben Bova seems to work very hard at working in new discoveries into his Glum Future but alas, his future is glum and not that well written.

James Nicoll

#20. I believe that I have now experienced the lifetime maximum exposure to bottom spanking in fantasy novels.

James Nicoll

#21. I have hated every Kress I read, especially this one, but the Bear is a standard Bear and if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.

James Nicoll

#22. My father once discovered that one cannot "walk off" gangrene.

James Nicoll

#23. You may have trouble getting permission to aero or lithobrake asteroids on Earth.

James Nicoll

#24. About First Landing by Robert Zubrin: Someday I'd like to read a story about competent people on Mars.

James Nicoll