Carl Hiaasen Quotes

"I never laugh or smile when I am writing. When I come home for lunch after writing all morning, my wife says I look like I just came home from a funeral. This is not bragging. This is an illness."

"Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job."

"The Florida in my novels is not as seedy as the real Florida. It's hard to stay ahead of the curve. Every time I write a scene that I think is the sickest thing I have ever dreamed up, it is surpassed by something that happens in real life."

"I won't be making any friends in the corporate suites."

"All novels are about crime. You'd be hard pressed to find any novel that does not have an element of crime. I don't see myself as a crime novelist, but there are crimes in my books. That's the nature of storytelling, if you want to reflect the real world."

"Nobody with an IQ higher than emergency-room temperature could ever believe that 'death panels' would be appointed to nudge the elderly toward euthanasia. Yet for idle entertainment, it's hard to beat Sarah Palin's ignorant nattering on the subject."

"Good satire comes from anger. It comes from a sense of injustice, that there are wrongs in the world that need to be fixed. And what better place to get that well of venom and outrage boiling than a newsroom, because you're on the front lines."

"There is no writer's block in a newsroom. There's only unemployment block."

"I've always enjoyed making people laugh. But in order for me to be funny, I have to get ticked off about something."

"Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books, because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket, then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering."

"Everybody's idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it's one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original."

"My humour has always come from anger, but I have to make sure I don't just get angry and jump on a soapbox."

"Informed opponents of Obama's healthcare initiative have expressed dismay at the low level of discourse."

"Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns."

"When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion."

"From my experience, politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being preached at and screeched at - you know, and the soapbox routine. They're much more uneasy knowing they're a target of ridicule."

"I don't have an e-reader. One reason is that I like to dog-ear the page when I find a particularly good sentence or passage."

"Lots of people can write a good first page but to sustain it, that's my litmus test. If I flip to the middle of the book and there's a piece of dialogue that's just outstanding, or a description, then I'll flip back to the first page and start it."

"Kids feel so strongly about what's going on today and what's happening to the world, and that's very inspiring. I feel more hopeful than ever before about the future."

"Humor can be an incredible lacerating and effective weapon. And that is the way I use it."

"When you put on the suits, when you pretend you're honest and you're robbing at a far higher level, these guys deserve to... well, to be in my novels, and I have special fates reserved for them."

"My driving record is not exemplary, but I have never had a speeding ticket over 100 m.p.h. I can say that unequivocally."

"My escape is to just get in a boat and disappear on the water."

"Disney's something to be a little alarmed about. It's not just a little theme park anymore. It's now an ethic and outlook and strategy that goes way beyond central Florida."

"The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring."

"People say sometimes, gosh, that was brave of you to write such-and-such last week. 'Brave?' What do they mean 'brave?' It's right! How could you not write it?"

"One problem with age is that patience begins to ebb."

"I've never progressed very far from my days as a smart aleck in middle school."

"My books are character-driven. They're not driven by the story."

"They have a crystalline sense of right and wrong; it disappears when they walk out the door with their M.B.A."