Joe R. Lansdale Quotes
-
The bottom line is, Texas and its people are pretty much what most people mean when they use the broader term 'America.'
-
I decided with 'Savage Season' to use a lot of things in my life as the basis.
-
Some people see writing as a white-collar career, but I've always approached it as a blue-collar writer.
-
I used to just sit down and read the dictionary, and I read the Bible and Shakespeare from cover to cover.
-
I worked in rose fields, and I worked in potato fields. I did some bouncing.
-
Texas is as alien as Mars.
-
Ossie Davis is one of my heroes for civil rights and things like that.
-
My father, he couldn't read or write.
-
If you don't toot your own horn, it goeth untooted.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
'The Bottoms' or 'A Fine Dark Line' are two of my favorites.
-
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.
-
Ray Bradbury taught me the importance of metaphor and simile and poetic style.
-
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.
-
I think there are some people for whom words are like food.
-
'Night They Missed the Horror Show' is my signature story. It changed my life, so it remains my favorite.
-
I've always done just pretty much what I wanted to do. I mean, I just did a thing for a small press called 'Zeppelins West' that's nothing but an absolute, over-the-top farce, almost like an Abbott & Costello, alternate-universe Western.
-
I love and respect the West - you can't live in Texas and not do that.
-
I turned out to be a tough, smart kid.
-
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.
-
Sometimes, if I don't write for a day or two, I get backed up - it's like constipation.