Quotes from Piers Anthony

I have, as may be apparent, not much respect for editors as a class.

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 need to learn the nuances of human behavior. Such as not going around naked. What's wrong with being natural? he demanded. Humans aren't natural. They are girt about by all manner of conventions. It will take time for you to catch up with them all.

It is possible to differ politically, socially, religiously, or in many other ways, yet to be friends.

At first I was exhilarated by my freedom from the responsibility of the kingship. This lasted about seven minutes. I was also depressed by my freedom from marriage, for I had become accustomed to the attentions of a woman. This lasted about nine minutes. Then I was bored.

But I've been dead much longer than I lived, and I have had the chance to educate myself in that that I lacked in life. I wasn't stupid when I lived, just ignorant. There's a lot to learn, simply by watching the follies of the living.

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!

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.

God created the earth but the Devil evolved it.

Writers pay a lot of attention to wordage, because some publishers seem to care more about length than about quality and will automatically reject novels that don't fit their narrow standards of length - or will chop out extra wordage to make a novel fit.

It is the man who can't be trusted who does not trust others because he judges them by himself.

Dor wondered whether, if he should ever happen to be a ghost for eight hundred years, zombies might begin to look good to him. He doubted it.

All true art stems from the depths of the unconscious mind.

Wenda's chest and hips shrank, her shoulders and arms turned muscular and her body became lean and hard where it had been rounded and soft. The hair of her head shortened drastically, and a mustache sprouted on her upper lip. Her delicate human feet had become hard hooves. She was now not a nymph but a faun. Physically; she would never be male in spirit.

Hell hath little fury like that of a critic who sees a writer make it big.

William Henley put it: It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

I think that man was half-right. He is better off out of the game - but the game may not be better off without him. A man should not exist for himself alone. Life made an investment in him, and that investment was not paid off.

Good intentions were not enough; they had to be rationally implemented.

It is not how long one lives, but how well one lives that is important.

But I have so much to learn!" Zane cried plaintively. "Then get to it, Death," she said, closing the door behind her.

It is the untrustworthy man who distrusts others, because he judges them by himself.

At any rate, they got the lead out—but paid a hideous price.

A few are addicted to mud. They wallow in it constantly." "They can't have many friends." "That's the funny thing! They have almost as many friends as the clean people. The trouble is, the friends are all the same kind of people.

Nuts grow on trees?" the spider inquired dubiously.

The manifest mind of a woman, he realized, made a great deal of difference in her appeal. Lesson for the day.