It's called 'The Outlaw Album,' not 'The Ozarks Album.' These are stories that delve into different kinds of outlawry, from criminal acts to interior, or psychological, outlawry. The book is not meant to be a tapestry of the Ozarks.
I think all regions have had their peculiarities of speech rounded off by television, radio, and people travel so much more now.
I have a Ford Taurus, and I don't care who knows it.
If I weren't so lazy, I would have 14 books, not eight.
I don't think I can write a book as nihilistic as some of my early ones. They're so bleak. I don't think I would enjoy that as much anymore. You really become fixated on ways out.
I realized there might be monetary or financial reasons to jump in and write a 'Winter's Bone Retriumphs' or something, and nobody would object to me doing that in publishing. But it would be a waste of my time, and they always take a little longer than you thought they would take.
It was in a grim room on Eddy Street that I finally opened 'A Moveable Feast.' I read it all overnight. I read it again the next day.
This happens to me all the time: I think I'm working on one thing, but this other thing, whether I want it to or not, keeps coming through.
I was reading newspaper front pages from the 1930s, and I was taken aback. I'm not naive about American history, but I was a bit knocked off my feet by things that used to be on the front pages of newspapers.
I'm very attracted to poetry for all the reasons someone likes poetry. The notion of compression seems to fit my personality.
Texas humor and Southern humor are pretty similar.
I think there are some folks who don't particularly like what I have to say, but on the whole, the reaction has been very positive.
Most of my characters aren't hillbillies anyway. Let's just call them proletariat with a disposition towards criminal activity.
I think my grandmother Woodrell was most responsible for my becoming a writer. She wasn't quite literate, but was very proud that she attended school as far as the third grade. She worked as a maid, housekeeper and cook.
Just because it's got a gun doesn't make it a crime novel, and just because there's a horse doesn't make it a western.
I learned my values. It's better to be poor than to be beholden. Wealth is not the object of life. You should be polite as long as possible, and when you can't be polite anymore, don't run.
I know people who have, until recently, lived with dirt floors. There are people who live way back off the grid, without electricity. Not a whole lot, but quite a few. That's a choice for a lot of them. There might be a religious element in their isolation, at least with some of them.
I'm surviving and developing as a writer. I don't know what brings you to mass attention in terms of sales. But I've gotten more and more comfortable with it. Of course if that changes, I'll be comfortable with that. All I can do is write the best books I can.
My father was a salesman, and I always said I wouldn't be one.
I was basically raised to look for chances to get even with several families for stuff that happened 30 or 40 years before I was born.
