I started writing when I was 9. My mother told me it was before that, but that was the first I remember.

I've never liked the publishing world's determination to pigeonhole every writer into a genre.

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.

My father, he couldn't read or write.

I decided with 'Savage Season' to use a lot of things in my life as the basis.

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.

When you live in a small town behind the Pine Curtain, you live inside your head a lot.

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.

I always disliked that anytime you had gays represented in - and there were some exceptions, certainly - but represented in popular fiction, they were usually the goofy neighbor next door, you know? And I just thought, 'Well, I know a lot of gay people, and they're just as varied as the heterosexual people I know.'

I write what I hear.

My father was the first person to introduce me to self-defense and martial arts, which I've been doing all my life now.

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.

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.

Sometimes, if I don't write for a day or two, I get backed up - it's like constipation.

I don't plot, and I don't plan. I like to be surprised like the reader.

A lot of friends I went to school with were criminals.

I tried to draw and write comics when I was four. By the time I was nine, I had written my first story - about my dog, of course.

I think there are some people for whom words are like food.

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.

I come from a poor family.

Some people see writing as a white-collar career, but I've always approached it as a blue-collar writer.

I don't want people reading my books just because they're horror or mysteries. I want them to read them because they're Joe Lansdale books.

The simple fact is, the more people who buy your books, the more are likely to read you. That's what I'd like to see happen.

Every time I've ever gotten close to being successful, I've found some way to screw it up.

I've done very well financially and sold a lot because I've had a multiple method of attack as a writer. That's a conscious strategy.

Psychologists and psychiatrists send me cards and say, 'Hey, I love your books.'

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.

Twain is my keystone. He reminds me of my people because that's the way they told stories.

I really hate racism because I saw people denied possibilities.

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.

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.