Quotes By Carl Hiaasen

We've always been fascinated with movie stars and singers, but the fascination with people who really have nothing to offer is something new.

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

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

When I'm deciding to read a book, I never open to the first chapter, because that's been revised and worked over 88 times. I'll just turn to the middle of the book, to the middle of a chapter, and just read a random page and I'll know right away whether this is the real deal or not.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

I'd always wanted to write books ever since I was a kid.

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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 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.