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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I decided with 'Savage Season' to use a lot of things in my life as the basis.
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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 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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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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Ossie Davis is one of my heroes for civil rights and things like that.
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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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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 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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Sometimes, if I don't write for a day or two, I get backed up - it's like constipation.
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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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I think there are some people for whom words are like food.
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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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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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'Night They Missed the Horror Show' is my signature story. It changed my life, so it remains my favorite.
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Ray Bradbury taught me the importance of metaphor and simile and poetic style.
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My father was just a hell of a guy. He had a real strong sense of honor, and he tried to pass that on to me. I like to think that I embrace that.