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" 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. "

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" My father was the first person to introduce me to self-defense and martial arts, which I've been doing all my life now. "

Joe R. Lansdale

Father

Doing

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

" My father had the most horrible racist rhetoric you ever heard, but he treated people all the same. I remember this rainstorm. A car broke down with these black people in it, and nobody would stop. My dad was a mechanic. He fixed the car for nothing. I remember looking at him when he got back in. He said, 'Well, they got those kids in the car.' "

" 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. "

" I love and respect the West - you can't live in Texas and not do that. "

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

Joe R. Lansdale

Surprised

Plot

" I think I built my reputation by not worrying about it. "

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

Joe R. Lansdale

Worth

Reading

" A lot of friends I went to school with were criminals. "

" Texas is as alien as Mars. "

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

Joe R. Lansdale

Sometimes

Day

" 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. "

" 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 write what I hear. "

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

Joe R. Lansdale

Rights

Heroes

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

" 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. "

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

" I turned out to be a tough, smart kid. "

" The Aryan Nation, the Klan, all these anti-immigrant groups - they've never really disappeared, and if you think they have, then you've been living in a bubble. "

" I come from a poor family. "

" 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. "

Joe R. Lansdale

Mother

Curious

" My father was just a hell of a guy. He had a real strong sense of honor, and he tried to pass that on to me. I like to think that I embrace that. "

Joe R. Lansdale

Think

Honor

" I think there are some people for whom words are like food. "