Joe R. Lansdale

“I think I built my reputation by not worrying about it.”

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

“If you don't toot your own horn, it goeth untooted.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“My father, he couldn't read or write.”

“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.”

“I didn't read Western novels much until I was in my twenties, but I had a diet of them on film and TV, as well as other things, of course.”

“People who grew up on my books are now able to get the point across to others that they're worth reading.”

“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 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.”

“I write what I hear.”

“I'm glad I've had the comic work. I plan to do others, but I could lay it down if I had to choose. I hope I don't have to, though.”

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