Testing of self is a regular part of our own lives, so it seems natural to make it a part of the lives of my characters, as well, albeit on a much different level.

Fantasy is the only canvas large enough for me to paint on.

I want you, as a reader, to experience what I experience, to let that other world, that imaginary world that I have created, tell you things about the real world.

Anyway, several rewrites later, Del Rey Books did publish my first novel, and it did become the first work of fiction on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list.

Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger, travel too far that road and the way is lost.

When I was a kid, we had to rely on our imaginations for entertainment.

Testing of self is a regular part of our own lives, so it seems natural to make it a part of the lives of my characters, as well, albeit on a much different level.

After all, you put a lot into creating a universe and everything that goes with it, and it seems a shame to use it only once.

I think I make better use of language and imagery than when I started out.

For a writer, its very attractive to stay in one world for a time.

I have learned to do more with less, so you don't see the big books anymore.

Writing fantasy lets me imagine a great deal more than, say, writing about alligators, and lets me write about places more distant than Florida, but I can tell you things about Florida and alligators, let you make the connection all on your own.

I haven't made up my mind about doing anymore Landover books.

Well, I think that as a country, we've drifted away from appreciating the importance of imagination.

Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.

We are constantly being put to the test by trying circumstances and difficult people and problems not necessarily of our own making.

My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few.

A world in which elves exist and magic works offers greater opportunities to digress and explore.

I might add that you change as a person as you grow older, so you change as a writer, too.

What I want to write about has changed somewhat, and the scope of the storytelling has changed accordingly.

Even after Sword was published, I was still only thinking about the next book, Elfstones.

On the other hand, I still approach each book with the same basic plan in mind - to put some people under severe stress and see how they hold up.

In bad weather, I spent hours drawing action figures on paper, coloring them, backing them on cardboard, then cutting them out and creating whole stories around their lives.

We forget that what matters begins with the imagination.

My interests are different now than they were thirty years ago.

I want to kick-start your imagination and let you discover the places it can take you.

I remember one winter, when I was about five or six, I spent three days with another boy, tracking a bobcat that had been sighted in another county fifty miles away, but which I was sure had come into our neighborhood.

I didn't want readers to have to make allowances for what they couldn't see, but to be able to say to themselves that the fabric of the magic detailed was perfectly believable.

The future is an ever-shifting maze of possibilities until it becomes the present.

We must nurture and love, if life is to have any real meaning. But First we must find a way to survive against the things that prevent us from doing so.

The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.

Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.

I would rather take the role and work and make my own money and self respect than to have sex with someone who has a lot of money.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.

Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego's evolution.

The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.

If you improve a teacher's self-esteem, confidence, communication skills or stress levels, you improve that teacher's overall effectiveness across the curriculum.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it's shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it's a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It's truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Self-justification is a treacherous servant.

To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it's unbelievable!

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.