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.'
Joe R. Lansdale
If you don't toot your own horn, it goeth untooted.
I love and respect the West - you can't live in Texas and not do that.
Texas is as alien as Mars.
'The Bottoms' or 'A Fine Dark Line' are two of my favorites.
I started writing when I was 9. My mother told me it was before that, but that was the first I remember.
I turned out to be a tough, smart kid.
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've always felt that if you pay your bills and can take care of yourself without too much stress, then it's a pretty damn good life.
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.
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.
I used to just sit down and read the dictionary, and I read the Bible and Shakespeare from cover to cover.
I figure I can be artistic, but I work like a blue-collar person, too, and I'm serious about that.
I think I built my reputation by not worrying about it.
Ossie Davis is one of my heroes for civil rights and things like that.
I never got a degree; I just started writing.
'Night They Missed the Horror Show' is my signature story. It changed my life, so it remains my favorite.
I sold my first story when I was 21 in 1973.
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.
People who grew up on my books are now able to get the point across to others that they're worth reading.
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.
