Jerry Pournelle Quotes

• 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

• 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

• Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don’t join writer’s clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing’s changed.

  Jerry Pournelle

• 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

• We do a hard fantasy as well as hard science fiction, and I think I probably single-handedly recreated military science fiction. It was dead before I started working in it.

  Jerry Pournelle

• To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

  Jerry Pournelle

• 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

• The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.

  Jerry Pournelle

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• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.

  Jerry Pournelle

• I think it takes about a million words to make a writer. I mean that you’re going to throw away.

  Jerry Pournelle

• I have more information in one place than anybody in the world.

  Jerry Pournelle

• 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

• Because Tom Doherty and people like that are not stupid. If they could have streamlined their operation more to get more money out of it, they would have done it. It’s not like they’re a bunch of idiots.

  Jerry Pournelle

• Asimov was the reason why we changed some rules in the SFWA, and I’m not convinced we changed it for the best

  Jerry Pournelle

• And that’s another piece of advice I’ll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go.

  Jerry Pournelle

Jerry Pournelle (22)

Birth:	7th August, 1933
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist

About

Jerry Eugene Pournelle was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, USA. He is an American science fiction writer of many novels and journalist who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte. He wrote the "Chaos Manor" column in BYTE. He served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He studied at the University of Washington and earned a BS degree in psychology and Mathematics in 1955, an MS degree in Experimental Statistics and Systems Engineering in 1958, and a PhD in political science in 1964. He has written several novels (with Larry Niven) include: The Mote in God's Eye, Inferno, Lucifer's Hammer, Oath of Fealty, Footfall, The Gripping Hand, The Burning City, Burning Tower, and Escape from Hell. He has written other novels include: King David's Spaceship, Birth of Fire, Exiles to Glory, Janissaries, Starswarm, Janissaries II (with Roland J. Green), The Legacy of Heorot (with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes), Janissaries III (with Roland J. Green), Fallen Angels (with Larry Niven and Michael F. Flynn), Beowulf's Children (with Larry Niven and Steven Barnes), and Higher Education (with Charles Sheffield).

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Today's Anniversary - 24th November

Births

• 1934 - Alfred Schnittke
• 1925 - Simon Van Der Meer
• 1934 - Martin Charnin
• 1632 - Baruch Spinoza
• 1942 - Marlin Fitzwater

Deaths

• 1957 - Diego Rivera
• 1990 - Fred Shero
• 2004 - Warren Spahn
• 1807 - Joseph Brant
• 1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald