Carl Hiaasen famous quotes

Like Richard Price and the late, great Elmore Leonard, Matt Burgess is one of those cool, quick and funny writers who can turn a seemingly routine crime caper into something special.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Special #Routine #Crime

The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Sin #Boring

Sunset on the water ought to be a quiet and easy time, but I guess some people can't stand a little silence.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Sunset #People #Water

My escape is to just get in a boat and disappear on the water.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Water #Boat #Disappear

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#World #Lines #Needs

I think in the old days, the nexus of weirdness ran through Southern California, and to a degree New York City. I think it's changed so that every bizarre story in the country now has a Florida connection. I don't know why, except it must be some inversion of magnetic poles or something.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Country #New York #Thinking

Sometimes you're going to be faced with situations where the line isn't clear between what's right and what's wrong.Your heart will tell you to do one thing and your brain will tell you to do something different. In the end, all that's left is to look at both sides and go with your best judgment.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Heart #Brain #Different

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Dog #Ears #Pages

That's the thing about being a Labrador retriever - you were born for fun. Seldom was your loopy, freewheeling mind cluttered by contemplation, and never at all by somber worry; every day was a romp. What else could there possibly be to life? Eating was a thrill. Pissing was a treat. Shitting was a joy. And licking your own balls? Bliss. And everywhere you went were gullible humans who patted and hugged and fussed over you.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Fun #Worry #Joy

You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Past #Intellectual #Energy

I won't be making any friends in the corporate suites.
-- Carl Hiaasen

Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Character #Dark #Unique

That's what people do when they find a special place that wild and full of life, they trample it to death.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#People #Special #Special Places

There's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, look!
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Country #Hate #Roles

As frightening as this may sound, what you see in the books is the way I see the world. And so far I haven't seen anything, either in Florida or elsewhere, to dissuade me from it.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Book #Florida #Sound

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Book #Writing #Ideas

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Hands #Scratches #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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Fun #Knowing #Soapbox

Hey. Sometimes to conclusions.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Hey #Sometimes #Conclusion

Obviously you have to make a profit to put out a newspaper. I'm not an idiot. But when the margins are in excess of 25 per cent you're talking about greed.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Talking #Greed #Excess

I'd love to see a good script of one of my books, in these years of animations and comic book sequels, and had so many written over the years, but none quite clicked.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Book #Years #Scripts

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

#Funny #Order #People

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Real #Book #World

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Humor #Weapons #Incredibles

One problem with age is that patience begins to ebb.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Patience #Age #Problem

Disney world is an armpit,compared to Montana!!
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Montana #World #Armpits

Jimmy Lee Baylis was a wise man, and knew better than to talk back to the man who signed his paycheck.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Wise #Men #Paychecks

Garcia wondered why people with JESUS stickers on their bumper always drove twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. If God was my co-pilot, he thought, I'd be doing a hundred and twenty.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Jesus #People #Pilots

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Believe #Elderly #Ignorant

My books are shelved in different places, depending on the bookstore. Sometimes they can be found in the Mystery section, sometimes in the Humor department, and occasionally even in the Literature aisle, which is somewhat astounding.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Book #Different #Literature

I think it's always good for the author to stay a good cattle prod's distance from the actual moviemaking.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Distance #Thinking #Cattle

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Real #Writing #Thinking

There is no writer's block in a newsroom. There's only unemployment block.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Block #Unemployment

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

#Smart #School #Middle

It's easy to get distracted by the vaudevillian aspects of the healthcare debate.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Healthcare #Debate #Easy

...Right now there's a pair of bad cops on their way out here to shoot me." "You don't know that." "Yeah, you're right," Stranahan said. "They're probably just collecting Toys for Tots. Now go.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Way #Pairs #Toys

The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Wind #Tree #Bending

Actually it was the mark of the stupid, which is what you get for sitting under a tree during a thunderstorm.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Stupid #Tree #Sitting

I’m waiting for the day when Rush Limbaugh’s pharmacist writes a book.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Book #Writing #Waiting

Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Iguanas #Tree #Mickey

Roy remembered the time he and his father had a talk about fighting. 'It's important to stand up for what's right,' Mr. Eberhardt had said, 'but sometimes there's a fine line between courage and stupidity.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Father #Fighting #Stupidity

as a lobbyist he had long ago concluded there was no difference in how Democrats and Republicans conducted the business of government. The game stayed the same: It was always about favors and friends, and who controlled the dough. Party labels were merely a way to keep track of the teams; issues were mostly smoke and vaudeville. Nobody believed in anything except hanging on to power, whatever it took. .....
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Team #Party #Government

The evening news made her wonder if God was dead; the morning sun made her believe He wasn't.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Morning #Believe #News

Mrs. Bonneville never buckled her seat belt, even though it was required by state law; an ardent libertarian, she opposed government meddling in all matters of personal choice.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Government #Law #Choices

and in the meantime don't jump to conclusions.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Conclusion

My books are character-driven. They're not driven by the story,
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Book #Character #Stories

Y'see, I get so bored so easily. I like to start with a clean slate each time. 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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Jobs #Book #Writing

The central part of the state is more remote and less scenic, and there's a huge agricultural belt that stretches from the south of Lake Okeechobee to the border of Everglades National Park, where the restoration effort is being concentrated, .. Obviously the movement to save the Everglades runs up against agricultural concerns.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Running #Agriculture #Lakes

The Thieves of Manhattan is a sly and cutting riff on the book-publishing world that is quite funny unless you happen to be an author, in which case the novel will make you consider a more sensible profession-like being a rodeo clown, for example, or a crab-fisherman in the Bering Sea.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Book #Cutting #Sea

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

#Records #Tickets #Driving

When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Trying #Nonfiction #Down And

I'd always wanted to write books ever since I was a kid,
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Book #Writing #Kids

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

#Anger #Soapbox #Humour

No deliberative body is manifestly less qualified to make decisions about public education than our state Legislature. With a few shining exceptions, most of these clowns don't read, can't write, and clearly can't add.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Writing #Shining #Decision

I got overwhelmed by the magnitude of the celebrity culture in America. My background is as a news journalist, and newsrooms in the US are shrinking - investigation teams are being terminated or shrunk on newspapers all around the country. The one aspect that's expanded is coverage of celebrity culture.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Country #Team #America

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Florida #Littles #Way

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Book #Names #Profound

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Depressing #Writing #Hands

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Want #Stuff #Newspapers

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.
-- Carl Hiaasen

#Morning #Home #Writing