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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Obviously it could be, because it was.

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?

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

Information is power. –Humfrey

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.

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