Carl Hiaasen

“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.”

“Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.”

“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.”

“One problem with age is that patience begins to ebb.”

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

“Dessert was an over baked chocolate chip cookies the size of a hockey puck and just about as tasty.”

“I’m waiting for the day when Rush Limbaugh’s pharmacist writes a book.”

“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.”

“...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.”

“The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Garcia wondered why people with JESUS stickers on their bumper always drove twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. If God was my co-pilot, he thought, I'd be doing a hundred and twenty.”

“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.”

“Please don't grow up to be one of those men who lie for the sport of it, and most men do. That's a fact. That's why the world is so messed up, Noah. That's why history books are full of so much heartache, and tragedy. Politicians, dictators, kings, phoney-baloney preachers-most of 'em are men, and most of 'em lie like rugs”

“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.”

“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 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.”