Joe R. Lansdale Quotes
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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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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 turned out to be a tough, smart kid.
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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 love and respect the West - you can't live in Texas and not do that.
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My father, he couldn't read or write.
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If you don't toot your own horn, it goeth untooted.
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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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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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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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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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Texas is as alien as Mars.
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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.
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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'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 always write like the devil's behind me with a whip. I'm going to write because I like it. Then I'm going to write another.