Joe R. Lansdale Quotes & Sayings

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

He decided quite suddenly, having kept fairly good record on the calendar, that tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and zombies be damned. The Christmas lights were going up. — Joe R. Lansdale

Ever notice how Christians quote the Old Testament more then the New Testament? That's so they can say mean things, talk bad about the queers and such. New Testament, that's the Christian book. The stuff in red, that's Jesus talk. That's what they're supposed to live their life by, but, no, they like the God of the Old Testament, the mean, judgmental one, before he was on Zoloft. — Joe R. Lansdale

All us humans are fouled on both ends. One we shit out of, and the other we talk shit out of. — Joe R. Lansdale

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. — Joe R. Lansdale

The problem, kid," Shorty said, "is there is no one on either side of the fence keeping measurements about what you do. God is an idea, and the devil is us. — Joe R. Lansdale

You want to know what I'm wearing?"
"Not unless you think it'll really get me excited."
"I'm afraid clothes have to have women in them for you to get excited."
"Maybe you could talk in a high voice."
"Cut through the shit, Hap. — Joe R. Lansdale

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. — Joe R. Lansdale

I'm going to say my name is Dorothy Sherman and I'm telling it like it is. I'm going to say my friends call me Dot, and I prefer my enemies not to call me at all. — Joe R. Lansdale

A day without the sun is like you know, night


— Joe R. Lansdale

Size and strength didn't intimidate Herman. As he told me later, no matter how big they grow, balls and eyes stay soft and a tire tool has no friends. — Joe R. Lansdale

I'm so bored I could sing to my dick. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

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

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

They were going to shoot us for five hundred dollars," I said. "Wait." I turned to Limp. "Was that apiece?"

"To split," Limp said.

"Really?" I said.

Limp nodded. "We got some raccoons out of an attic for the same price. — Joe R. Lansdale

Shit, I could jerk you up from there, pop you like a whip. Pop you so hard your snatch will snap off and smack the wall."

"So," Vanilla said. "How was charm school? — Joe R. Lansdale

If this saying did not exist, somebody would have invented it.
— Joe R. Lansdale

Sometimes he felt as if he had stepped into an alternate universe where the old laws of nature and what was right and wrong did not apply. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

It's over with, " Raul said, " You did all you could. You've got this tough-guy image. It's out of date. We fags, we don't have to do that. It's not in our makeup."
"What's in my makeup is in my makeup," Leonard said. "I'm a man. I got balls. So do you. I like balls. I like your balls, but I'm still a man and I got to feel like a man. Maybe I'm some kind of anomaly or something. I don't know. I don't get it. But I like a man acts like a man without thinking it's being a bully. I can't explain it him, Hap. Can you? — Joe R. Lansdale

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

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

Hallowed be thy name, oh Lord
and shotgun do your stuff — Joe R. Lansdale

You paying good money?"

"For what?"

"Information, asshole. You was the one said it."

"Depends on the information. But please, I had asshole legally dropped from my name.

"That was a mistake. — Joe R. Lansdale

I trust the sun to rise and the sun to set, though I know one day it will do these things without me. — Joe R. Lansdale

God is an idea, the devil is us. — Joe R. Lansdale

The logic of a madman is a sane man's confusion. — Joe R. Lansdale

Everything is humorous," said Shorty, "except your own death. But other people will laugh. — Joe R. Lansdale

Jim Bob looked at his watch.
"I got time to get there and shower up, put on some smell-good, buy a couple packs of rubbers, and meet my barrel racer."
"Couple packs of rubbers," Brett said. "Very romantic."
"Ah, honey, I'm taking her to dinner first, and I always let the woman put the rubber on, and I think two packs is enough. And don't worry. I need an extra pack, I can send her to the drugstore. I got a bicycle in the garage. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

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

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

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

Scott Sigler's Infected is a bucking pulp pony that throws you this way and that, and just when you think you've got your balance, that ole pony bucks the other way. All in all, one hell of an exhilarating ride, and highly recommended. — Joe R. Lansdale

Deep down I think I may be just like everyone else. And do you know what, Harry?"
"No sir."
"That bothers me. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

Who ever said keeping the law of the Lord is peaceable work? The devil brings a sword and I bring a sword back to him. It is the will of the Lord and I am his servant. — Joe R. Lansdale

Hap, even tough I'm a racist castrating bitch that wants you to be better than you are, wants you to do something with your life besides be a knockabout, do you think you could find it in your heart, in your itty-bitty white man's dick, to get a hard-on for me? In other words, want to fuck? — Joe R. Lansdale

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. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

the Texas stars shining down like rattlesnake eyes showing in a deep, dark wood. — Joe R. Lansdale

In polite society what you say to an attractive woman who is dressed in a way that makes you understand the power of biology is, "You look nice. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Run everything on a generator," Haskel said. "Got to keep it a certain temperature for the stuff I carry. Not too cold. Not too hot. There's shit in here, weather got wrong, it'd go off and blow our asses all the way to Mineola. Maybe out in the goddamned Gulf."
"I don't like to travel that far unless I got plane tickets and a steward in my lap," Leonard said.
Haskel cut an eye toward Leonard. "You mean stewardess, don't you?"
"I don't think so," Leonard said, and let Haskel churn that one over. — Joe R. Lansdale

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. — Joe R. Lansdale

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. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

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. — Joe R. Lansdale

But to lose my idealism, to quit believing in the ability of human beings to rise above their baser instincts, was to become old and bitter and of no service to anyone, not even myself. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

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

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

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

Yeah, things are better for blacks and women and gays, but it was the blacks and women and gays that did it, not fuck-ups like this bunch. Whites and straights came along to give help, all right, after the blacks said 'enough' and got their heads busted, and it's the same for the gays and the women. The whites and straights, they control things, and they could have changed it anytime. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

Far as I knew, closest she'd gotten to art was a drafting table and dressing mannequins in store windows, and the closest I'd gotten to saving the world was my name on some petitions, for everything from recycling aluminum cans to saving the whales. I put my cans in the trash now, and I didn't know how the whales we're doing. — Joe R. Lansdale

You're brooding, Leonard, my friend. What's the problem?"
"I blew it with Fitzgerald."
"I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. It was more like a nuclear disaster. — Joe R. Lansdale

Some things you do, not because they're pleasant, but because they have to be done. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

But killing a man ought to mean something, even if you have to do it. — Joe R. Lansdale

Skittles: the fun,colorful candy to eat, but even funner to throw at old people.
=]
(yes I know funner isn't a word) — Joe R. Lansdale

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

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

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

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

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. — Joe R. Lansdale

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. — Joe R. Lansdale

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

Aren't you embarrassed undressing in front of a queer?" Leonard said. "All you know, I might be sizing up your butthole."
"Just call me a tease. — Joe R. Lansdale

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. — Joe R. Lansdale