"As for what I write - well, I write the kind of tales I like to read myself."

    "My first book was accepted and published when I was quite young - in fact it was accepted and published before I was 21 - so I have had a long writing career."

    "I began writing when I was in high school, and had written three full books before the third was published. I then went back and revised my first book (written in high school), and that was the second title I had published."

    "Until 1950, SF was very difficult to sell in the book trade. I worked in adventure-spy-historical-and-mysteries. I really broke into the field as a writer after having edited some SF anthologies for World Publishing - though I had written early books on the subject, but had not discovered any publisher interested in them until that date."

    "SF appeals to me, as I have always enjoyed reading it, and it is a purely imaginative exercise - though one does have to do a lot of research for each book. I find that the sword-and-sorcery has the greatest appeal for myself - and it is the most fun to write."

    "Most of my contributions in the field have been for teenagers, and my one rule is that one must never simplify - which is an insult to the readers' intelligence - and most of the SF readers tend to be in the upper third of their classes in school."

    "So much of modern fiction - at least in this country - is violent, raw and most pessimistic. In fact my writing is now considered one belonging to the age of the dinosaurs. They are even rewriting history to be "politically correct" and few even among the college graduates know either history or literature so that the errors made by young writers and editors can hardly be believed."

Andre Norton


Taken from:

Reginald, R. Science fiction and fantasy literature, 1979 p. 1018
Private letter from Ms. Norton, May 20, 1998

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