Niven's Laws, Niven's Laws For Writers
“True stories seldom have endings.
I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.”
Source: Fly by Night
Source: Lighthousekeeping (2004), p. 49
Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)
“In the end, we'll all become stories.”
Source: Moral Disorder and Other Stories
“We have a place, all of us, in a long story. A story we continue, but whose end we will not see.”
2000s, 2001, First inaugural address (January 2001)
Context: We have a place, all of us, in a long story. A story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, a story of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom, the story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer. It is the American story, a story of flawed and fallible people, united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals. The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born. Americans are called to enact this promise in our lives and in our laws. And though our nation has sometimes halted, and sometimes delayed, we must follow no other course.
