Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Carl Hiaasen
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: March 12
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Fort Lauderdale
Florida
Something
Although
Novel
Break
Working
Read
Else
Peek
Sometimes
Nonfiction
Trying
Mostly

More quotes by Carl Hiaasen

Image
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
Image
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
Image
The TV commercials, which are endless and fairly crass, gave birth to Brock, the bad-lawyer character in Razor Girl. In real life you can find even sleazier examples than him.
Carl Hiaasen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
...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
Image
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
Image
Every writer scrounges for inspiration in different places, and there's no shame in raiding the headlines. It's necessary, in fact, when attempting contemporary satire. Sharp-edged humor relies on topical reference points.
Carl Hiaasen
Image
There's this false notion that this is a regional phenomenon, when in fact every state in the union has hardcore rednecks. No exceptions.
Carl Hiaasen
Image
I still do a weekly opinion column for the Miami Herald, and it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Rotten fish.
Carl Hiaasen
Image
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
Image
The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.
Carl Hiaasen
Image
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
Image
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
Image
A bonus, being a writer, is that the true-life source material is fabulously bizarre. There's so much corruption, violence and free-floating depravity that the well never runs dry, whether you're a novelist, a journalist, or both.
Carl Hiaasen
Image
I won't be making any friends in the corporate suites.
Carl Hiaasen
Image
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