Joe R. Lansdale Quotes
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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 lived below the poverty line when I was young and starting out as a writer. But my wife and I kept trying to do things better, as anyone with ambition does. But just because you're trying doesn't mean you're always going to succeed.
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I come from blue collar. I'm very working class.
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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 I built my reputation by not worrying about it.
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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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Edgar Rice Burroughs taught me pace and gave me a sense of action and adventure.
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Twain is my keystone. He reminds me of my people because that's the way they told stories.
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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 dad was born in 1909, my mother in 1914, I believe. Their life experiences were different than younger parents, so I grew up with a different perspective.
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My father was the first person to introduce me to self-defense and martial arts, which I've been doing all my life now.
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I sold my first story when I was 21 in 1973.
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I think the big thing is that Stephen King is just a phenomenon, and when he came along, for the first time horror was suddenly considered a very commercial genre. It had always been around, of course, but now, the books had the word 'horror' actually printed on their spines.
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My grandmother on my mother's side lived to nearly 100 years old, and she had seen Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as a little girl and had come to Texas by covered wagon.
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I was a house dad. Once, my wife was working as a dispatcher at the fire department, and I was staying home and writing while baby-sitting my son, who hardly ever slept. So I wrote in twenty-minute patches. Some of that early stuff is just dreadful. I got a thousand rejects.
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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.
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'Bubba Ho-Tep' was an accidental story that turned out to be my first film adaptation, and it's still going strong in story and film.
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The Westerns have probably affected me more than any one thing, Western-related material. I love Westerns.
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I figure I can be artistic, but I work like a blue-collar person, too, and I'm serious about that.
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I never got a degree; I just started writing.
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In some ways, I don't consider a single Hap and Leonard novel the best, but I consider them my best characters.
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I never felt poor. Our family euphemism was that we were broke, which I think psychologically gave you a different feeling. There were people far worse than we were.