Top 27 Quotes & Sayings by James Nicoll

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian writer James Nicoll.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
James Nicoll

James Davis Nicoll is a Canadian freelance game and speculative fiction reviewer, former security guard and role-playing game store owner, and also works as a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club. As a Usenet personality, Nicoll is known for writing a widely quoted epigram on the English language, as well as for his accounts of suffering a high number of accidents, which he has narrated over the years in Usenet groups like rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.fandom. He is now a blogger on Dreamwidth and Facebook, and an occasional columnist on Tor.com. In 2014, he started his website, jamesdavisnicoll.com, dedicated to his book reviews of works old and new; and later added Young People Read Old SFF, where his panel of younger readers read pre-1980 science fiction and fantasy, and Nicoll and his collaborators report on the younger readers' reactions.

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.
After enough concussions the head injuries blur together.
Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts — © James Nicoll
Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts
About First Landing by Robert Zubrin: Someday I'd like to read a story about competent people on Mars.
Never bring a gun to a fight where the other guy has a time-machine and tomorrow's newspapers.
I can't help but notice that everytime I fly somewhere, other people's planes fall out of the sky.
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?
It's bad to wake up and see a large cat in mid-leap from the rough vicinity of the ceiling.
Nothin'g sa'ys q'uality fantas'y l'ike misuse'd apos'tro'phes.
I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface.
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.
I believe that I have now experienced the lifetime maximum exposure to bottom spanking in fantasy novels.
About Antrax by Terry Brooks: I wonder if he's planning a book called SRS? Or F'lu?
Most of my scars are not fire-related and I no longer say "I know what I am doing" at critical moments.
Romeo and Juliet *died*. I always liked that in a teen romance story.
Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences.
I think once you start eating people you should stop claiming to be a vegetarian, even if you only eat bad people.
You may have trouble getting permission to aero or lithobrake asteroids on Earth.
[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.
"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".
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.
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
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.
Deadly nightshade is the only plant I have ever been able to get to grow for me.
My father once discovered that one cannot "walk off" gangrene.
This is the sort of book that justifies fatwahs. If WWIII occurred right now, we could die happy knowing Baxter would never write again. If a dinosaur killing asteroid was headed for Earth and I knew Baxter had another book coming up, I would campaign for letting the rock hit, since it is obviously the work of a benovelent deity trying to save us from another Titan.
My grandfather for example only died twice, once during the war and once in the 1980s.
Until recently baby production was largely dependent on slave labour; as soon as women are allowed to answer the question "Would you like to squeeze as many objects the size of a watermelon out of your body as it takes to kill you?" they generally answer "No, thank you." This leads to falling birthrates everywhere women are not kept enslaved and ignorant of the alternatives.
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