Carl Hiaasen Quotes - Page 3

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.

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.

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

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.

Hey. Sometimes to conclusions.

and in the meantime don't jump to conclusions.

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.

Disney world is an armpit compared to Montana.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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!

When I was writing Razor Girl, I thought it would be fun to have a redneck TV family that was really just a bunch of actors who had to be trained to be rednecks. That's not so farfetched, if you know how Hollywood works.

I'm sort of fascinated by America's fascination with rednecks, the whole Duck Dynasty thing. Being a white guy from the South, I find it amazing that so many TV viewers are enchanted by beards, bad dentistry and moonshine accents.

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.

Unfortunately, Florida is a mecca for the shyster element, and there are apparently no rules on the kinds of advertising a lawyer can do.

Ironically, I come from a family of lawyers - my dad, my grandfather, and now my oldest son. And some of my very best friends are lawyers, though they don't resemble the ones that appear in my novels.

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.

I love reality shows. The folks who dream up some of these concepts are either geniuses, or totally stoned.

There's this false notion that this is a regional phenomenon, when in fact every state in the union has hardcore rednecks. No exceptions.

That dreadful alligator attack in Orlando would never have happened if Disney had put up real warning signs, like other Florida resorts do. But wild alligators don't fit the Disney image, so they were no proper warnings, and a child died for no reason.