Joe R. Lansdale Quotes

I wasn't a big science-fiction fan growing up. But I loved Jules Verne and Sherlock Holmes. Both came into play on 'The X-Files.'

'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Alice in Wonderland' inspired me. I wanted to take those themes and try to bring it into a more 21st story with aliens.

When Ellen Datlow was running the fiction at 'Omni' in the late '80s and into the '90s, I had a subscription. It was one of two subscriptions I'd saved for, the other being 'Spider-Man.' And they each opened my mind and my heart in wonderful ways.

I feel like my imagination was crafted by Tolkien. He seemed to tap into that childhood intrigue of secret doors and hidden worlds.

I've always loved sci-fi and fantasy.

I think that sense of wonderment, where you walk out expecting the ordinary and are confronted by the extraordinary, is something that has always interested me, whether in TV or comic books.

My interest in fantasy began pretty much when I started to read.

Most of my short stories are fantasy.

I love, love, love fantasy, like 'Lord of the Rings' and things like that.

I definitely love fantasy and would want to be in a fantasy project.

All of my work is influenced by fairy tales, and I hope my work shows Hans Christian Anderson's influence.

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children.

Nothing I had written before 'Mary Poppins' had anything to do with children, and I have always assumed, when I thought about it at all, that she had come out of the same wall of nothingness as the poetry, myth and legend that had absorbed me all my writing life.

I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels.

From a very young age, stories fuelled my imagination in the most wonderful way.

I love sci-fi and fantasy.

I like fantasy.

It's the reason we go to films and watch television: to escape the mundane nature of life and see another world and see ourselves in that other world. I think that's what sci-fi does so well.

I like superheroes. I like the drama of it, the stirring, larger-than-life aspect.

The storytelling in 'Doctor Who' is quite universal.

Kids need stuff which is different than what their life is that they can kind of live through.

I've never turned into a bee - I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.

When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.

I believe in fairy tales. They are the basis of all our performance of storytelling and film-making - when we twist the real events of the world into something that offers us hope - and I believe in that.

I think it's also safe to say genre TV and movies were a big influence - the first stories I ever tried to write were Godzilla fan fiction when I was in elementary school, complete with elaborate maps of Monster Island made with multiple sheets of typing paper and nearly six feet wide. I kind of wish I still had those.