Quotes By Carl Hiaasen

The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.

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.

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

The one thing a lifetime in the newspaper business teaches you is pace - you spend all your time trying to make sure that the reader's going to finish what you're writing.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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!'

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.

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

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Kids feel so strongly about what's going on today and what's happening to the world, and that's very inspiring. I feel more hopeful than ever before about the future.

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.

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.

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.