Quotes By Carl Hiaasen

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

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.

One problem with age is that patience begins to ebb.

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 greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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!'

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.

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.

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

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