Joe R. Lansdale Quotes
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The bottom line is, Texas and its people are pretty much what most people mean when they use the broader term 'America.'
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Some people see writing as a white-collar career, but I've always approached it as a blue-collar writer.
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I decided with 'Savage Season' to use a lot of things in my life as the basis.
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I used to just sit down and read the dictionary, and I read the Bible and Shakespeare from cover to cover.
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I worked in rose fields, and I worked in potato fields. I did some bouncing.
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Ossie Davis is one of my heroes for civil rights and things like that.
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If you don't toot your own horn, it goeth untooted.
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My father, he couldn't read or write.
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Texas is as alien as Mars.
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My father always encouraged me to get an education, but he was also a guy that, when he was younger, had ridden the rails from town to town to box and wrestle for money.
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The Aryan Nation, the Klan, all these anti-immigrant groups - they've never really disappeared, and if you think they have, then you've been living in a bubble.
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I turned out to be a tough, smart kid.
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I love and respect the West - you can't live in Texas and not do that.
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I've been writing since 1973. I've written nonfiction things of that nature, but I'm probably best known for crime fiction and, to some extent, horror fiction.
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My mother wanted me to be a reader. She was a reader. Even though she had an 11th-grade education, she was curious about all kinds of things - archeology, anthropology.
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I have been on a horrible sea cruise. When my wife and I went to Mexico, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands, I was seasick for a lot of the time. I didn't like being trapped on a ship with a bunch of shuffleboarders.
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I've got friends who totally disagree on politics, religion, cultural things, but at the core, we're the same people.
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Sometimes, if I don't write for a day or two, I get backed up - it's like constipation.
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When I wrote 'Savage Season,' it was three years later before I wrote the second Hap and Leonard novel. Whenever I wrote one, I never intended to write the next one.
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I think there are some people for whom words are like food.
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Texas is so wrapped up in myth and legend, it's hard to know what the state and its people are really about. Real Texans, raised on these myths and legends, sometimes become legends themselves.
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My father had the most horrible racist rhetoric you ever heard, but he treated people all the same. I remember this rainstorm. A car broke down with these black people in it, and nobody would stop. My dad was a mechanic. He fixed the car for nothing. I remember looking at him when he got back in. He said, 'Well, they got those kids in the car.'
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If I could take you back in time to the fifties and walk you around to some of the places where I grew up, you'd be trying to get back in your time machine. It wasn't all sock hops - matter of fact, I never saw a sock hop.
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I come from blue collar. I'm very working class.