„Death is the only fantasy that becomes real for all humans.“

Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987), Marrying the Hangman

Futurist Ray Kurweil Bring Dead Father Back to Life http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/futurist-ray-kurzweil-bring-dead-father-back-life/story?id14267712 (2011)

Interview by John C. Snider (2003) at SciFiDimensions.com http://www.scifidimensions.com/Aug03/terrygoodkind.htm
Kontext: Fantasy allows you to shine a different kind of light on human beings. I believe the only valid use of fantasy is to illustrate important human themes. Magic in my novels is used in three ways: the simplest is as a metaphor for technology. A good example is a magic carpet. There's no magic carpet in my novels, but if someone needs to travel a great distance, they could use a magic carpet, while in a contemporary novel they'd use a car. The second way, and I think the most important, is as a metaphor for individuality and individual ability. The mediocre world doesn't want individuals to rise above what everyone else is doing. The third way I use magic is as a metaphor for coming out of an age of mysticism into a Renaissance. So, in a way it's the struggle between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance. … I never allow my characters to use magic to solve their problems. Some of their peripheral problems are solved through their magical abilities, but it's couched in terms of overcoming those problems in a thinking way. The major conflicts in the books are always solved through human intellect, through thinking out the problem and coming up with a solution. It's never "I'll just wave my magic wand over the bad guys and have them all fall down dead!"

Quelle: Austenland

Quelle: Nowhere Man

Quelle: Save Me the Waltz

Quelle: NOS4A2

"Coffee Versus Gin", My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)

The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 43.

infinity plus interview (2001)
Kontext: The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart. Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle, so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they're inevitably ugly and they all wear black.
I wanted to stand much of that on its head.
In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

Discussing the influence of real-life faiths on his work and its religious systems, Authors@Google (August 2011)
Kontext: I think worship of death is an interesting basis for religion, because after all death is the one universal. It doesn't seem to matter what gods you pray to. We all die, in the real world and in fantasy worlds, and if there was some religion where you did not die I suspect that would be, that god would become very popular. They all promise us eternal life, but whatever.

Quelle: Fight Club

"Jungleland"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)

Quelle: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 5 : The Delphic Oracle as Therapist, p. 99
Kontext: The self is made up, on its growing edge, of the models, forms, metaphors, myths, and all other kinds of psychic content which give it direction in its self-creation. This is a process that goes on continuously. As Kierkegaard well said, the self is only that which it is in the process of becoming. Despite the obvious determinism in human life — especially in the physical aspect of ones self in such simple things as color of eyes, height relative length of life, and so on — there is also, clearly, this element of self-directing, self-forming. Thinking and self-creating are inseparable. When we become aware of all the fantasies in which we see ourselves in the future, pilot ourselves this way or that, this becomes obvious.

Quelle: The Importance of Living (1937), pp. 39–40

“One and Many,” p. 3
Do What You Will (1928)

Quelle: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), p. ix

Quelle: Digital Fortress