Quotes from 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.

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.

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

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.

Jimmy Lee Baylis was a wise man, and knew better than to talk back to the man who signed his paycheck.

The evening news made her wonder if God was dead; the morning sun made her believe He wasn't.

Disney is just Disney. It's a company that's very good at what it does - controlling and promoting an image - until something happens that it can't control or cover up.

Remember what happened last time with the 'cuda.

As far as I'm concerned, the gator that ate T.C. deserves a medal from Crime Stoppers.

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

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.

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.

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

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

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?

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

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

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.

I got overwhelmed by the magnitude of the celebrity culture in America. My background is as a news journalist, and newsrooms in the US are shrinking - investigation teams are being terminated or shrunk on newspapers all around the country. The one aspect that's expanded is coverage of celebrity culture.

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.

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

Unfortunately for novelists, real life is getting way too funny and far-fetched.

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.