Latest Joe R. Lansdale Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• No system is better than another, but some are better for certain people. The person makes a system worthwhile, not the other way around. I blended a lot of systems I had studied over the years, Judo, wrestling, boxing, Hapkido, Kenpo, Thai Boxing, American Kickboxing, Jujitsu, Aikido.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Wrestling, Years, People

  Source: thequietus.com

• I took what worked for me and found I had a system that others were interested in and seemed to work for a wide number of people. It was recognised by other martial artists, grandmasters and such, and they gave me the recognition. I'm proud of my work in martial arts. I still teach but only once a week in a private class, and I train a couple more days a week.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Art, Couple, Class

  Source: thequietus.com

• I know the Pollock novel. Read it last year and liked it. Daniel Woodrell is awesome. I especially like the book Winter's Bone, and the film made from it. Larry Brown is terrific, all his work, but for me Joe in particular, also a good film, but a much better novel.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Book, Winter, Years

  Source: thequietus.com

• Enjoy it if you do, but don't tell me how to live or teach it in school, or not allow a woman the right to choose, and so on. Yeah, all of that slips into my work. I even got a death threat the other day for not being pro gun, which just proves my point. They can kiss my ass.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  School, Kissing, Gun

  Source: thequietus.com

• I love Crews, but had been writing a long time before I knew of him. I learned of him because a friend thought we were similar. The reason we are is we were both heavily influenced by Flannery O'Conner. She was wonderful.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Writing, Long, Wonderful

  Source: thequietus.com

• It seems to be the heart of much of my work. I grew up seeing a lot of racism in the South, but I've seen it all over the world. Don't care for it at all. I was poor, so I'm used to the underdog position.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Heart, Racism, Underdog

  Source: thequietus.com

• I'm not poor now, but unlike some of my friends who are now rich, I haven't embraced conservatism and religion. I'm not opposed to religion if you keep it out of my life.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Rich, Poor, Conservatism

  Source: thequietus.com

• As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Kids, Scott Fitzgerald, Rays

  Source: thequietus.com

• Different influences at different times in my career, and some have stayed with me more, some less. Chester Himes. Ralph Dennis, who wrote a series called Hardman which is a big influence on the Hap and Leonard novels. Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Gerald Kersh, Fredrick Brown, Robert Bloch, and I'm just getting started. I read constantly. As for the epic Western, that's Paradise Sky.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Epic, Sky, Careers

  Source: thequietus.com

• I have finally become my own genre, and now that's what publishers want. I have a wonderful publisher now, Mulholland, very innovated, very fine people working there.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  People, Want, Wonderful

  Source: thequietus.com

• I could always write in a wide variety. My moods change same as reader's moods change. I really do love writing the historicals, however, but if that's all I did I would go crazy, same with any of the other kinds of books. I need variety.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Crazy, Book, Writing

  Source: thequietus.com

• I wrote for television some, animation. Batman the Animated Series, Superman the Animated Series, Son of Batman, things of that nature were made and I'm happy about that, but now the recent film and TV stuff have validated me, as if that makes any sense.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Son, Animated Series, Television

  Source: thequietus.com

• I have always felt validated and it shouldn't take film to do that for writer, but I'm glad it has. My plan has always been to be read more widely by doing just what I've always done. I wanted to break into the mainstream without becoming mainstream.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Done, Becoming, Film

  Source: thequietus.com

• I love Hap and Leonard and plan to write more about them, but not exclusively about them. I have always worked in film, or since the eighties, but my screenplays - though I got paid and did screenplays for Ridley Scott and John Irvin and Mark Romanek - seldom got made.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Writing, Film, Made

  Source: thequietus.com

• I think I have broken into the mainstream, and I think that may happen in a broader way, but I want to do it on my own terms, not become a standard producer.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Thinking, Broken, May

  Source: thequietus.com

• I had no idea Savage Season was the beginning of a series. I wrote the second one about three years later. The character of Hap wouldn't stop talking to me, and then there was a third, and over the years nine novels and a collection of stories and some uncollected stories.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Character, Talking, Years

  Source: thequietus.com

• I would have fought in WW2, so I wasn't a pacifist in the broader sense. I prefer to be a pacifist, but I think there are exceptions and times to defend yourself or your country, but that war wasn't one of them.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Country, War, Thinking

  Source: thequietus.com

• First, there are some of my readers who only read Hap and Leonard, not the other stuff, and some who don't read Hap and Leonard, but a large percentage are crossover readers. And yes, I did refuse to go to Vietnam and it looked like prison was in my future, but they sent me to the psychiatrist and he gave me a 1-Y, which is unfit for military service essentially.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Military, Vietnam, Stuff

  Source: thequietus.com

• I wouldn't choose conscientious objector and I wouldn't go to Canada. I did what Hap did and almost went to prison. I think the threw me a bone as the war was winding down, and I think they accepted my sincerity for being against that war.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  War, Thinking, Down And

  Source: thequietus.com

• We couldn't get it off the ground as a film, but then we begin to think television, and Lowell pushed it out there and Jim and Nick were anxious to do Hap and Leonard anyway, and I had worked with them before, so it was a perfect story. I love the series. I hope there's a second.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Thinking, Perfect, Stories

  Source: thequietus.com

• The reviews on it, and the new novel, Honky Tonk Samurai have been awesome, though I'm of the school if you believe the good ones you got to believe the bad ones, it's been mostly good ones. The previewers seem to be very happy and excited about it. I know I am. There are plans to continue if it does well.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Believe, School, Doe

  Source: thequietus.com

• Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis are just great in that, and Don's direction is sublime. Love it, and I was glad to be a part of it, if just in spirit and Don's desire for it to be a good film and for me to be happy with it. When I first saw it I was very impressed, and it gets better with repeat viewings.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Sublime, Get Better, Desire

  Source: thequietus.com

• I was very familiar with both actors, as well as Christina Hendricks and Bill Sage, Jimmi Simpson, Polly McIntosh, but the other main actors were new to me. And they were all terrific. Just amazing. Actually, Lowell Northrop optioned Savage Season from me, first book in the series, and I wrote a screenplay.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Book, Savages, Actors

  Source: thequietus.com

• First, there has been a lot of interest in The Drive-in, but, alas, it hasn't actually come to fruition. Maybe soon. Don really got Bubba and I didn't think it could be a film. I thought it was too odd to make it to film. He asked me to do the screenplay, but I declined. I didn't see that it could be a screenplay but he wrote one and proved me wrong. He was always considerate about what I thought about the film and the story's presentation, but in the end, he's the director and he had to make decisions. All good ones.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Thinking, Decision, Directors

  Source: thequietus.com