Author details
All Jerry Pournelle Quotes
There were probably, what, 300 science-fiction members in the SFWA, of whom probably a hundred were active members in the sense that they were selling something every year, or every couple years.
Jerry Pournelle
66% of people like this quote
Somebody's always getting me to come lecture to their writing class, and I don't talk about writing at all, I talk about the business of making a living at this racket.
Jerry Pournelle
57% of people like this quote
I have more information in one place than anybody in the world.
Jerry Pournelle
57% of people like this quote
The Aztecs believe they started up in what's now New Mexico, and wandered for 10,000 years before they got down into where they are now, in Mexico City. That's a weird legend.
Jerry Pournelle
56% of people like this quote
Heinlein never had a best-seller. Even, I think, with Stranger in a Strange Land, I don't think it was actually on the New York Times best seller list.
Jerry Pournelle
55% of people like this quote
One the other hand, the publishing trend is ghastly, isn't it? Two hundred and something distributors are now down to 10 or 12? And what's the recruiting drive?
Jerry Pournelle
55% of people like this quote
The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?
Jerry Pournelle
55% of people like this quote
And in down times it shakes a lot of the bad SF out, a lot the stuff that was bought for literary reasons, which is neither entertaining nor great literature.
Jerry Pournelle
53% of people like this quote
You see, I used to do a certain amount of market research by going to the local drugstore and seeing what the truck drivers would put up. Now it's all just copies from the latest best-seller list and damn little of anything else.
Jerry Pournelle
52% of people like this quote
In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.
Jerry Pournelle
51% of people like this quote
You no longer have much in the way of knowing what to do in a big, epic novel about the future, because nobody knows what the hell is going to happen.
Jerry Pournelle
50% of people like this quote
The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.
Jerry Pournelle
49% of people like this quote
I think it takes about a million words to make a writer. I mean that you're going to throw away.
Jerry Pournelle
49% of people like this quote
We're basically after Joe's beer money, and Joe likes his beer, so you better make sure that what you give him is at least as pleasurable to him as having his six-pack of beer would be.
Jerry Pournelle
48% of people like this quote
So, I guess the answer to your question is very few people can bring off a novel of the future because it's just so damn hard to make it look like the future.
Jerry Pournelle
48% of people like this quote
Related authors