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.

Evil people relate more to the black pole. It’s – this is not exact, of course, as the science of magic is as complex as the magic of electronics – it’s like traveling past a...

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

Being terrified but going ahead and doing what must be done—that’s courage. The one who feels no fear is a fool, and the one who lets fear rule him is a coward.

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

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.

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.

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

Dor shook his head. Such mysteries were beyond his fathoming. All he could do was…what he could do.

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...

By all means. Swords have ever been the best servants of crazy men.

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

Now it was done. He was free of Xanth forever. Free to make his own life, without being ridiculed or mothered or tempted. Free to be himself.Bink put his face in his hands and cried.

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.

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

What kind of fool had he been, to throw away romance untried?

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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...

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

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...

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...

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.

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

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...

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

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,...

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

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.

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

Referring to Jumper the spider, who needs to hide himself in human form, and he’s learning to act like a human.”I’m sure I can learn to walk faster than that,” he said desperately.”But you’ll also...

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.

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.

For an instant Stile was daunted by the improbability of it all: a man, a cyborg, a robot, an animalhead, and a wooden golem, all riding unicorns through a battlefield strewn with goblins and dragons,...

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.

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.

Brevity did not mean inconsequence…

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

A mortal person’s mind is like a wilderness, with a tremendous volume of decaying constructs and half-understood experience forming natural harbors for wild animal effects.

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

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.

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

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