Quotes from Joe R. Lansdale

I do better just letting the stories develop. I don't outline very well, and I can't follow it if I do. Once I've outlined it, why write the damn book?

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.'

'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.

I was well under the spell of the old Gold Medal Crime novels when I wrote 'Savage Season,' and I wanted to write a modern version of that. I had tried the same thing with 'Cold in July,' and I wanted to give it another go.

Let me tell you, if you have never seen an agitated squirrel you have seen very little, nor have you heard much, because the sound of an angry squirrel is not to be forgotten.

Hallowed be thy name, oh Lord -- and shotgun do your stuff

Only our memories allow that some people ever existed. That they mattered, or mattered too much.

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

I thanked him and he asked me if my cape got caught on stuff when I was running and jumping, and I said, Sometimes.

They might have been all-right people doing the best they could, but I got to tell you, you got a dead cat lying in your yard you ought to bury it. That's my motto.

You need to read some Agatha Christie, man. Why? Am I being punished?

It was the kind of talk that made me want to break off a limb and take to whacking her and that bunch of hypocrites across the back of the head.

I get the whole lost-your-parents thing. Been there. But that don't have to turn you stupid. That's a choice, like wearing green stretch pants.

Over-confidence is the way to give your soul to the devil an inch at a time.

I thought I had the world by the tail. It took me a few years to realize the closest I was to having the world by the tail was being a dingle berry on one of its ass hairs.

The sun, like a boil on the bright blue ass of day, rolled gradually forward and spread its legs wide to reveal the pubic thatch of night, a hairy darkness in which stars crawled like lice, and the moon crabbed slowly upward like an albino dog tick striving for the anal gulch.

That first loving kiss, the one that comes out of you from the source of your personal river, and the one that comes from her that is the same, there's never another moment like it; never another flame that burns so hot. It can never be that good again, ever. All manner of goodness can come after, but it's different. And that's a good thing, because if we burned that hot for too long, we'd be nothing but ash.

I like ambition. I like someone who gets up in the morning and has a purpose. A real purpose. I have one. I want whoever I love to have one. I always look forward to breakfast.

I got something to say to you, big shot. Say it, then, I said, while I'm used to the drone of your voice. I'd rather not get acclimated again.

It's one thing to wave at the Devil from afar, quite another to shake the bastard's hand.

T]hose who refuse to consider what they do are cloaked in the shadow of stupidity, but they enjoy the shade. It is cool and comfortable there.

That's love for you. When it's good, it's magic. When it isn't, it just pees all in your soup.

Everything is humorous, said Shorty, except your own death. But other people will laugh.

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