Top 100 Niven's Quotes
#1. From David Niven's autobiography, Bring on the Empty Horses. Director Mike Curtiz to David Niven & Errol Flynn: You lousy bums, you and your stinking language, you think I know fuck nothing, well let me tell you - I know FUCK ALL!
David Niven
#2. Everyone know of him. Some people hate him because they think he's weird and he gets into fights and gets kicked out of school and does what he wants. Some people worship him because he's weird and he gets into fights and gets kicked out of school and does what he wants.
Jennifer Niven
#3. And in that moment there's nothing I fear except losing hold of her hand.
Jennifer Niven
#4. That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
Larry Niven
#5. If anyone can make it to another world, it's Theodore Finch.
Jennifer Niven
#6. I run for miles but don't count them, passing dark house after dark house. I feel sorry for everyone in this town who's sleeping. I
Jennifer Niven
#7. I want to say It's okay to be a person. We're all afraid. We all get hurt. It's okay to hurt. You'd be so much more likable if you just acted human.
Jennifer Niven
#8. In all, I was in 16 movies, including 'The Bishop's Wife' with Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven; I was in 'Rio Grande' with John Wayne, 'Albuquerque' with Randall Scott, 'Blue Skies' with Bing Crosby and 'Hans Christian Anderson' with Danny Kaye.
Karolyn Grimes
#9. He's the kind of Finch who would stand on a building and think about jumping just because nothing scares him. He is seriously badass.
Jennifer Niven
#11. I'm still here, and I'm grateful, because otherwise I would be missing this. Sometimes it's good to be awake.
Jennifer Niven
#12. Drive anywhere and everywhere, even when there's nowhere to go. (Note: There's always somewhere to go.)
Jennifer Niven
#13. Maybe it's better that she's locked away from the rest of the world. Maybe she's not cut out to live like other people with other people. Maybe she belongs in that house forever.
Jennifer Niven
#14. She and I have gotten to be kind of friendly, and that's making me very, very happy. Like stupidly happy. Like so-happy-my-friends-can't-stand-to-be-around-me happy.
Jennifer Niven
#15. When it's my turn, I introduce myself as Josh Raymond, seventeen, no previous experience beyond my recent halfhearted experiment with sleeping pills. "The Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect is life," I add, even though no one knows what this means
Jennifer Niven
#16. Violet Markey.There's more to you than meets the eye.
Jennifer Niven
#17. I wonder why it is, that young men are always cautioned against bad girls. Anyone can handle a bad girl. It's the good girls men should be warned against.
David Niven
#18. I remember him standing next to me at Hoosier Hill, smiling out at the ugly trees and the ugly farmland and the ugly kids as if he could see Oz. 'Believe it or not, it's actually beautiful to some people..' So I decide to see it through his eyes.
Jennifer Niven
#19. Too much of my life feels like this already- trying to recycle something old into something new and better, disguising someone else's trash as some fresh, shiny thing.
Jennifer Niven
#20. Stars in the sky, stars on the ground. It's hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins. I feel the need to say something grand and poetic, but the only thing I come up with is It's lovely.
Jennifer Niven
#21. Boredom is my worst enemy. It's killed a lot of my friends, but it won't get me. When I get bored, I go risk my life somewhere.
Larry Niven
#22. You have to live your life like you'll never be sorry. It's easier just to do the right thing from the start so there's nothing to apologize for. Not that I'm one to talk.
Jennifer Niven
#23. I make two movies a year to take care of the butcher and the baker and the school fees. Then I try to write, but it's not that easy. Acting is what's easy.
David Niven
#24. You are the most amazing person I've ever met. You're different. You're you. Always. Who else can say that except maybe Seth Powell, and he's an idiot. You, Libby Strout, are not an idiot.
Jennifer Niven
#25. If only world leaders would get laid well and regularly, the world's problems might disappear.
Jennifer Niven
#26. You know that thing where you repeat a word over and over until it just sounds like utter gibberish? That's what doing a day of press on a film is like. Ten interviews in a row, all asking pretty much the same questions until you find yourself giving pretty much the same answers.
John Niven
#27. It is publication week for my new novel 'The Sunshine Cruise Company.' Go me! Anyway, I may as well get the shameless plug over with right away - buy it. You'll like it. It's about a bunch of old ladies who rob a bank.
John Niven
#28. For a second, I think he's going to kiss me. For a second, I want him to.
Jennifer Niven
#29. The thing I realize is, that it's not what you take, it's what you leave.
Jennifer Niven
#30. Are you totally into Violet Markey, like forever kind or the she's-interesting-for-right-now kind?
Jennifer Niven
#31. Don't get me wrong: there are aspects of buying music online that I love. Instantly being able to hear a song the moment it crosses your mind? Where's the downside? However, I do feel for those too young to remember the thrill of going record shopping.
John Niven
#32. work, whatever it must be, is the service of God and of the community and therefore the expression of man's dignity. - Emil Brunner, Gifford Lectures, 1948
Larry Niven
#33. I think of something my mom used to say, about how as scary as it is to go after dreams, it's even scarier not to.
Jennifer Niven
#34. We tread water, looking at each other, and suddenly there's not enough water in the world to clean away my dirty thoughts. She
Jennifer Niven
#35. Sorry wastes time. You have to live your life like you'll never be sorry. It's easier just to do the right thing from the start so there's nothing to apologize for.
Jennifer Niven
#36. Everything starts as somebody's dream.
Larry Niven
#37. It's true, after all, at least compared to him, and actually what he means is that I have bad luck with women. Something about going for the bitchy ones or the crazy ones or the ones who pretend not to know me when other people are around.
Jennifer Niven
#38. I open my eyes and sit straight up , gasping, filling my lungs. I'm happy no one's here to see me, because I'm sputtering and splashing and coughing up water. There's no rush of having survived, only emptiness, and lungs that need air, and wet sticking hair to my face
Jennifer Niven
#39. Dear friend, You are not a freak. You are wanted. You are necessary. You are the only you there is. Don't be afraid to leave the castle. It's a great big world out there. Love, a fellow reader
Jennifer Niven
#40. But come to think of it, after a lifetime of feeling too much, maybe there's actually something to be said for fast and sudden.
Jennifer Niven
#41. That's the only part that bugs me about this. It's so empty out there." "True. On the other hand, if the Sun blows up we'll be in an unrivaled position to say, 'What was that?'" "Oh,
Larry Niven
#42. I've often found myself looking fondly at the Valentine's cultures in other countries. South Korea, for instance - where women must give chocolate to men.
John Niven
#43. You make me lovely, and it's so lovely to be lovely to the one I love. ...
Jennifer Niven
#44. If there's one thing i know, it's that no one can promise anything.
Jennifer Niven
#45. Quite a place to be, that. When there's no one to tell you not to have another drink.
John Niven
#46. There were some summers when every boy in Ayrshire seemed to be playing golf, and my dad taught me. But he was a terrible teacher - of everything. Learning to drive with him almost killed me. He was the world's most impatient man - awful short fuse.
John Niven
#47. All this time, I thought it was her weight that made me see her.
But it's not her weight at all.
It's her.
Jennifer Niven
#48. You're probably better at math than I am, because pretty much everyone's better at math than I am, but it's okay, I'm fine with it. See, I excel at other, more important things - guitar, sex, and consistently disappointing my dad, to name a few.
Jennifer Niven
#49. Because in this house there's no such thing as being sick unless you can measure it with a thermometer
Jennifer Niven
#50. He smiles out at the ugly trees and the ugly farmland and the ugly kids as if he can see Oz. As if he can really, truly, see the beauty that's there.
Jennifer Niven
#51. Much in life is simply a matter of perspective. It's not inherently good or
bad, a success or failure; it's how we choose to look at things that makes the difference.
David Niven
#52. It's okay to laugh, you know. The earth's not going to split open. You're not going to hell. Believe me. If there's a hell, I'll be there ahead of you, and they'll be too busy with me to even check you in.
Jennifer Niven
#53. In those moments, none of it matters. It's like that stuff is happening to someone else because all you feel is dark inside, and that darkness just kind of takes over. You don't even really think about what might happen to the people you leave behind, because all you can think about is yourself.
Jennifer Niven
#54. Since I stopped writing, I read more than ever. Other people's words, not my own
my words are gone.
Jennifer Niven
#55. As I dial 9-1-1, I think: He's not nowhere. He's not dead. He just found that other world.
Jennifer Niven
#56. I am on the highest branch.
We are written in paint.
I believe in signs.
The glow of Ultraviolet.
A lake. A prayer. It's so lovely to be lovely in Private.
Jennifer Niven
#57. Maybe it isn't the room that's different. Maybe it's me.
Jennifer Niven
#58. Bruce Sterling is one terrific writer and he's relatively new, but I don't know how long he's been doing it; he probably doesn't need the publicity anymore!
Larry Niven
#59. He writes Before I die I want to and draws a line. He writes it again. Then he writes it a dozen more times. After we fill these up, we can keep going on the front of the building and down the other side. It's a good way to figure out just why we're here.
Jennifer Niven
#60. Tell her what she wants to hear.
But I don't because suddenly I can't do it anymore. She's exhausting and I'm exhausting, and we're exhausting. I've been telling her what she wants to hear for the past four years.
Jennifer Niven
#62. On all sides of us, spread out below, are little white lights and black pockets of trees. Stars in the sky, stars on the ground. It's hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins. I hate to admit it, but it's beautiful.
Jennifer Niven
#63. You can't always be fine. No one's always fine. And I know you're used to being on your own, and I know I should have been a better friend so that you didn't have to get used to being on your own, but I'm here now, and I wish you'd talk to me.
Jennifer Niven
#64. 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
#65. The first book I bought with my own money as a teenager was Martin Amis's 'Money.' You know that thing when you read a book and you think, 'I'm going to have to read every word ever written by this man.'
John Niven
#66. Positive ones go on the wall, negative on the floor over there. He points to this heap of paper. It's important to get those down but they don't need to stick around after you do
Jennifer Niven
#67. If a song's meant to stay around, you carry it with you in your bones.
Jennifer Niven
#68. But that isn't why. The why is that none of it matters. Not school, not cheerleading, not boyfriends or friends or parties or creative writing programs or ... " She waves her arms at the world. "It's all just time filler until we die.
Jennifer Niven
#69. This is the single loveliest thing anyone's ever done for me. It's movie lovely. It feels somehow epic and fragile, and I wand the night to last forever, and knowing it can't already has me sad.
Jennifer Niven
#70. 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
#71. I have a kind of psychic invisibility. As long as I can stay scared, I can keep people from seeing me. That's what we have to count on.
Larry Niven
#72. I try to tell it he might have meant "Just be careful when you have sex. Use a condom," but instead, because, you know, it's a brain, and therefore has - is - a mind of its own, it starts thinking of every way in which Violet Markey might break my heart. I
Jennifer Niven
#73. It's the kind of smile you smile when you're thinking someone over and trying to decide how you feel about them.
Jennifer Niven
#74. We can't fight another person's battle, no matter how much we want to.
Jennifer Niven
#75. If you put a frog in boiling water, it'll jump straight out. If you put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil, it'll sit right there until it dies. Scotland has been sitting in England's gradually boiling water for so long that many people are used to it.
John Niven
#76. I feel sorry for everyone in this town who's sleeping.
Jennifer Niven
#77. For what it's worth, you showed me something, Ultraviolet - there is such a thing as a perfect day.
Jennifer Niven
#78. The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum
Larry Niven
#79. Loss does that, hits you out of the blue. You can be in the car or in class or at the movies, laughing and having a good time, and suddenly it's as if someone has reached directly into the wound and squeezed with all their might.
Jennifer Niven
#80. Did you kids have fun?" she asks, and we know she's hoping we'll beg for permission to never go there again. Decca
Jennifer Niven
#81. It's strange seeing his eyes in someone else's face
Jennifer Niven
#82. 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
#83. The problem with people is they forget that most of the time it's the small things that count.
Jennifer Niven
#84. My mama's purpose had been to love and to be loved.
Jennifer Niven
#85. Whenever someone like a plumber or a mechanic tries to explain something technical to me, I listen for about three seconds before it all just becomes white noise, like Charlie Brown's teacher.
John Niven
#86. I remember being so full of pain and anger that I wished nothing but tongue-burning on everyone who hurt me, especially Moses Hunt. But here's the thing- Merricat poisoned her entire family. The only crime I committed was being fat.
Jennifer Niven
#87. This is followed by laughter because we're in high school, which means we're predictable and almost everything is funny, especially if it's someone else's public humiliation.
Jennifer Niven
#88. Maybe. Maybe not. Whether it's filler or not, I'm pretty glad to be here." If there's anything I've learned, it's that you need to make the most of it. "It mattered enough for you not to jump.
Jennifer Niven
#89. Everything starts as somebody's daydream.
Larry Niven
#90. I've been lucky enough to win an Oscar, write a best-seller - my other dream would be to have a painting in the Louvre. The only way that's going to happen is if I paint a dirty one on the wall of the gentlemen's lavatory.
David Niven
#91. I'm broken, and no one can fix it. I've tried. I'm still trying. I can't love anyone because it's not fair to anyone who loves me back. I'll never hurt you ... But I can't promise I won't pick you apart, piece by piece, until you're in a thousand pieces just like me.
Jennifer Niven
#92. By the way? For what it's worth, you showed me something, Ultraviolet - there is such a thing as a Ariana Grande day.
Jennifer Niven
#93. My mouth is an inch from hers, and I wait for her to slap me or push me away, but then she closes her eyes, and that's when I know - I'm in. Okay
Jennifer Niven
#94. You might expect me to say "life," having just woken up and all, but it's only when I'm awake that I think about dying.
Jennifer Niven
#95. I love the world that is my room. It's nicer in here than out there, because in here I'm whatever I want to be ... I am fearless. I am free. I am safe.
Jennifer Niven
#96. The best advice I was ever given was on my twenty-first birthday when my father said, Son, here's a million dollars. Don't lose it.
Larry Niven
#97. On one level, of course, the notion of judging films or books or music against each other is completely ridiculous. Who's to say '12 Years A Slave' is a better film than 'The Wolf of Wall Street'? Or that one album in a certain genre is better than another in a completely different genre?
John Niven
#98. One year later, I grew out of my clothes because, it turns out, growing fourteen inches in a summer is easy. It's growing out of a label that's hard. Which
Jennifer Niven
#99. And then she kisses me. It's the kind of kiss that makes me lose track of everything, and so it may take hours or minutes by the time we break apart.
Jennifer Niven
#100. I try not feel jealous of the fact that he's been checking in with them but not me. After all, they're his family. I'm only me, the most important person in his life, for a while at least.
Jennifer Niven
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
