Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasenis an American journalist, columnist, and novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 March 1953
CityPlantation, FL
CountryUnited States of America
anger soapbox humour
My humour has always come from anger, but I have to make sure I don't just get angry and jump on a soapbox.
morning home writing
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.
country team america
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.
jobs book writing
Y'see, I get so bored so easily. I like to start with a clean slate each time. 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.
children real fit
That dreadful alligator attack in Orlando would never have happened if Disney had put up real warning signs, like other Florida resorts do. But wild alligators don't fit the Disney image, so they were no proper warnings, and a child died for no reason.
past intellectual ink
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.
country new-york thinking
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.
fighting affection concrete
I was born and raised here [in Florida], so I still have tremendous affection for the state - especially the few wild places that haven't disappeared under concrete. What's left is still worth fighting for, and that's why I stay.
heart brain different
Sometimes you're going to be faced with situations where the line isn't clear between what's right and what's wrong.Your heart will tell you to do one thing and your brain will tell you to do something different. In the end, all that's left is to look at both sides and go with your best judgment.
real way novelists
Unfortunately for novelists, real life is getting way too funny and far-fetched.
block unemployment writers-block
There is no writer's block in a newsroom. There's only unemployment block.
needs world lines
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.
book cutting sea
The Thieves of Manhattan is a sly and cutting riff on the book-publishing world that is quite funny unless you happen to be an author, in which case the novel will make you consider a more sensible profession-like being a rodeo clown, for example, or a crab-fisherman in the Bering Sea.
speak politician enough
The one word that no politician will ever speak, is 'enough.' Enough.