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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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, when it is obvious the readers were waiting for us all along.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.

Prosperity is the measure or touchstone of virtue, for it is less difficult to bear misfortune than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

It affords me sincere pleasure to be able to apprise you of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi.

Just as a mother finds pleasure in taking her little child on her lap, there to feed and caress him, in like manner our loving God shows His fondness for His beloved souls who have given themselves entirely to Him and have placed all their hope in His goodness.

The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.

I love making people laugh. It's an addiction and it's probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there's no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves.

This bored fantastic woman, with her animal nature, giving herself the pleasure of seeing her enemy struck down, not a particularly keen one for her because she is so weary of having all her desires satisfied.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary.

There is a pleasure in being mad which none but madmen know.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet.

Marriage is the miracle that transforms a kiss from a pleasure into a duty.

'Project Runway' was my guilty pleasure while my son was napping or nursing.

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.