Carl Hiaasen Quotes

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Carl Hiaasen

Profession : Writer

Birth : March 12, 1953

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

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

Carl Hiaasen

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

Carl Hiaasen

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

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

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

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

Carl Hiaasen

The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.

Carl Hiaasen

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

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

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

Carl Hiaasen

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?

Carl Hiaasen

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.

Carl Hiaasen

The one word that no politician will ever speak, is 'enough.' Enough.

Carl Hiaasen

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

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

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

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

Carl Hiaasen

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

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

Carl Hiaasen