Piers Anthony Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Information is power. --Humfrey

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

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

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

Obviously it could be, because it was.

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Robert Jordan... is a lot of writer

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

A horse is wonderful by definition.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.