Joe R. Lansdale Quotes

I do read a lot. I read more than I watch movies.

I get inspired from all different kinds of places - cartoons, comic books, movies and things like that.

I'm a product of the 1970s, so I have a short attention span. You know, I grew up on cartoons and half-hour shows. So the stories that I'm interested in grab my attention very quickly, and they have to keep my attention.

Everyone keeps saying the western's dead, but it's not.

I think violence, cynicism, brutality and fashion are the staples of our diet. I think in the grand history of story-telling, going back to people sitting around fires, the dark side of human nature has always been very important. Movies are part of that tradition.

I think readers are always patient. Look at the 'Harry Potter' series. Some have given up on this generation of kids as game and TV addicts, but lots of people spend lots of time patiently reading through hundreds of pages of dense prose. I think reading a comic by comparison is a lot more immediate.

I think people used to read 'War and Peace,' and now they don't; now they sit around with their tablets and watch 'Downton Abbey' and 'Breaking Bad' or whatever, and they want the things that they watch to be better so that they can feel better about themselves for watching it.

Because I was in the business of translating the 'X-Men' from the very successful comics, and taking the most popular book of the 20th century in 'The Lord of the Rings,' and making it into three movies, I hope people realize I wouldn't get involved in anything I didn't think was really going to be worth their while.

Americas are, for a variety of reasons, the most adept at producing the kind of entertainment that delivers easy satisfactions.

I never had any interest in sitcoms or motion pictures or anything like that.

I find that movies tend to fix the aesthetics of a story in people's minds.

Jazz, rock and roll, movies and comics are the culture of America.

I always loved television. I always loved movies.

I never read. The paper or anything. I watch a lot of movies, and TV series and stuff. But I never, never read.

I love movies, I love television, I love narratives of all kinds.

I suppose I was formed by too many movies and too much television. At some point I absorbed the dramatic formula.

I don't read books. I like to read newspapers and magazines, but I've never learnt to enjoy books or novels.

My dream remains to inform and entertain through fiction in the form of novels and movies that compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Well, I'm a consumer as well. I go to the movies with my popcorn and believe everything I see.

Human beings need stories, and we're looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it's television, whether it's comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.

Some novel lovers have no interest in comics, and some comics fans would never take the time to read a novel.

Television's not going read stories to you.

Mostly, I was only interested in television as a kid, and the majority of reading material I collected was an adjunct to that central concern, comic books and magazines included.

Books and movies are kind of my two great loves. I don't have too many other actual hobbies. That's pretty much it.

Whatever happened to books? Suddenly everybody's talking about these 100-hour movies called 'Breaking Bad'. People are talking about TV the same way they used to talk about novels back in the 1980s. I like to think I hang out with some pretty smart people, but all they talk about is 'Breaking Bad.'