Piers Anthony quotes:

Normally I work out a general summary of what I mean to do, then start writing, and the details can be different from my anticipation. So there is considerable flow, but always within channels.

I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon.com.

I turned my home state of Florida into the Land of Xanth.

I hope to read a Harry Potter novel soon, to see what it's all about. I admit to being annoyed that many good light fantasy writers have had trouble getting published, in England and elsewhere, when it is obvious the readers were waiting for us all along.

Here's a secret: fictive text doesn't necessarily flow easily. Most of the time it's more like cutting a highway through a mountain. You just have to keep working with your pick, chipping away at the rock, making slow progress.

When one person makes an accusation, check to be sure he himself is not the guilty one. Sometimes it is those whose case is weak who make the most clamour.

I have always admired the work of Phil Farmer and was glad for the chance to work with him. Readers today may be too young to remember his classics like The Lovers.

All things make sense; you just have to fathom how they make sense.

It would be easier to write a novel without reader input, but I feel the fiction is richer for it.

She looked around. "Oh, I've just got to hug somebody! You!" And she hugged Puck, the little ghost horse. "And you." She hugged Pook, and Peek, and even the nose of the moat monster. "But not you," she decided, encountering the zombie.

At present I answer about 100 letters a month, and read 300 emails.

If every editor turns you down, maybe you should take a second look at your text, however, just in case.

Bink knew the dolphin only from old pictures; it was a kind of magic fish that breathed air instead of water.

Keep writing, because not only does practice improve skill, it gives you more chances to score on the market. I did that for eight years before making my first sale.

I wish my readers took less of my time - about a third of my working time goes to them - but I love and need them all.

Princess Rose should indeed be a TV movie, assuming something doesn't go wrong. I don't know how good a movie it will be, because the way movie folk think is different from the way writers think, and I distrust what isn't done my way. This is what I call a healthy paranoia.

In fact, I believe that we need better sex education in our own culture, here in America, so that young folk learn about things like venereal disease before they encounter it.

Happy children do not seem to grow up to be writers.

When I started writing this, I found that I simply couldn't take fantasy seriously, so it became humorous, and continued from there.

As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.

SF is the literature of the theoretically possible, and F is the literature of the impossible.

No novel is a clone of any preceding one, though with a background cast of characters and things that has grown to thousands, there are many familiar aspects.

At this slower pace the journey took a couple of days, and I fought off a few minor threats along the way --griffins, carnivorous plants, giant serpents, hostile centaurs, that sort of thing, purely routine --and I was beginning to get bored when at last the dusky towers of Castle Roogna hove into view.

I never do a full outline, and if I did, I would not feel bound to it, because the view from inside a scene can be different from the view outside it. But neither do I just start writing and see what happens; I am far more disciplined than that.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

Dor woke again as dawn came. The sun had somehow gotten around to the east, where the land was, and dried off so that it could shine again.

People talk-- they sneer at escapism. Well, there are those of us who need it.

What splendor nature proffered to the eye of any man who had half the wit to appreciate it!

That most dangerous of opponents: the one who took pains to comprehend the position of his adversary.

What I like least is dealing with publishers who simply don't want collaborations regardless of their merit.

One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need.

Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series also shows the potential of lighter fantastic fiction. I read the first, and listened to a tape of a later one, and it's fun.

...the sweetest temptation could be that which was known to be the most foolish.

A horse is wonderful by definition.

At the time I wrote Xone I had never been on the Internet.

Barbarian --A Code of Conduct honored by all true barbarian warriors, requiring excellent coordination with weapons, closeness to nature, awkwardness with women, common sense, and completion of the mission.

Be what you are; it is better that way. --Dolph

But I don't read or listen for pleasure. I have too much else to do.

But one must go where one's road leads, even when it's a distressing road.

Every person professes to love good and hate evil, but in his actions his real preferences emerges.

For our stories are not yet finished, and perhaps will never be.

Have a working spouse, because you won't earn a living from writing - not at first, if ever. My wife worked for years to support us.

I did not know at first that it would be a series; I discovered after the first novel that I had more to say about it, so I did another. And another, and then the readers demanded yet more.

I do one Xanth novel a year, because at the moment that is all that publishers will accept; they don't want any other type of fiction from me, so Xanth pays my way.

I think it's a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as story-telling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers.

If the fiercest conglomerate monsters had souls, with all that implied, who could condemn them as evil?

Information is power. --Humfrey

Is it foolish to care for non-existent folk?Then, leave me to my foolishness.

Never thought I'd see the day when Death was denied. That leaves taxes as the only certainty.

Obviously it could be, because it was.

One day you'll discover that the opinions of worthless people are worthless.

One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not. We who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs, or seem to seek them. Who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors. We are not that way from perversity, and we cannot just relax and let it go. We've learned to cope in ways you never had to.

Polishing: a useful lesson for the hopeful writer. You say your tormented prose doesn't read as well as mine? Neither does mine, at first!

Robert Jordan... is a lot of writer

Terry Pratchett's right up my alley ... give him a try!

The biggest fool is the one who thinks he knows it all.

The library is a place of mental diversion, learning, and comfort for anyone who has an intellect. I know of no librarian who when asked for food for the mind will offer a stone. What more could anyone ask?

We are all creatures of our ancestry! There is no right and wrong, objectively.

When you steal from the library, you are preventing anyone else from reading that book, and the very notion makes me want to drop you in the Void.

Adults had the notion that juveniles needed to suffer. Only when they had suffered enough to wipe out most of their naturally joyous spirits and innocence were they staid enough to be considered mature. An adult was essentially a broken-down child.