Joe R. Lansdale Quotes
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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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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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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 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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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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My father, he couldn't read or write.
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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 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 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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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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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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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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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 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 come from blue collar. I'm very working class.
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I started writing when I was 9. My mother told me it was before that, but that was the first I remember.
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If you know everything, it keeps you from writing. You don't want a story to burn you out instead of surprising you.