Quotes from Piers Anthony

Why did things have to be so complicated with human beings?...Yet if we were not what we were, creatures with at least the awareness of purpose and honor, what would we be? Empty knights in armor, seeming so strong on the outside, yet hollow inside?

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.

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

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

Information is power. --Humfrey

What is life, except an ongoing instinct for survival? Nature uses that instinct to make us perform; otherwise we would all relax, and the species would disappear. Nature is a cruel green mother. The survival instinct is a goad, not a privilege.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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