Joe R. Lansdale

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

“Robert Bloch taught me about mixing horror and humor.”

“I sold my first story when I was 21 in 1973.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“Texas is as alien as Mars.”

“I've been writing since 1973. I've written nonfiction things of that nature, but I'm probably best known for crime fiction and, to some extent, horror fiction.”

“Ossie Davis is one of my heroes for civil rights and things like that.”

“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.”

“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'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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“'Night They Missed the Horror Show' is my signature story. It changed my life, so it remains my favorite.”