Quotes from Joe R. Lansdale

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

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

Edgar Rice Burroughs taught me pace and gave me a sense of action and adventure.

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

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.

I figure I can be artistic, but I work like a blue-collar person, too, and I'm serious about that.

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

If you know everything, it keeps you from writing. You don't want a story to burn you out instead of surprising you.

The logic of a madman is a sane man's confusion.

There's no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-made man. And no one more admirable.

Don't try to skin your rabbit and keep it as a pet too.

I was born in the '50s - 1951. So I grew up during that part of the '50s when everything was supposed to be at its best in America, they claimed, and then eased into the '60s.

I come from blue collar. I'm very working class.

I really hate racism because I saw people denied possibilities.

I worked in rose fields, and I worked in potato fields. I did some bouncing.

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 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.

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 used to just sit down and read the dictionary, and I read the Bible and Shakespeare from cover to cover.

The Westerns have probably affected me more than any one thing, Western-related material. I love Westerns.

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've got friends who totally disagree on politics, religion, cultural things, but at the core, we're the same people.

'The Bottoms' or 'A Fine Dark Line' are two of my favorites.

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