Carl Hiaasen Quotes

Robert Ludlum, all of them, write the absolute best they can. You can't tone it down. You just do what you do, and if it comes out literary, so be it.

A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

Most books are three-thirds rubbish.

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

When you find that a book is poor ... waste no more time upon it.

For heaven's sake, don't write writing. Write reading!

It doesn't really matter what "genre" your book is. What matters is that it's a good book of its kind. Whatever that kind may be.

I can get really obsessive. I like writing many drafts, and I try not to because it is very time-consuming, especially when you're working on a novel. But I do like to take a story and reorder it, put things in different places. This allows me to see things in a new and sometimes surprising way.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I read a lot of scripts, and there's a lot of good writing and a lot of OK writing and a lot of crappy writing. And even with the really good writing, it doesn't necessarily speak to me.

You can fake a lot of stuff, but you can't fake if the story isn't there and if the writing isn't good.

I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,'_ 'tender' or 'universal.' But to the real question of what's inside: I avoid books that seem to conservatively follow stale formulas. I don't read for plot, a story 'about' this or that.

I read all kinds of novels, as long as they're good.

I have read a thousand screenplays, and I have acted in a handful of them, and I have felt when it feels good, the writing, and it feels natural, and feels funny or sad or honest or whatever it may be. You connect. And I felt when it feels like writing, when it feels stale, or when it feels artificial or forced, or too theatrical or whatever.

My agent will say, 'Well, it's another graphic novel.' I don't care. It's better writing than anything else that's out there. The characters are much better.

For me, the bottom line is what's on the page.

A lot of the time, I read something I've written, and I think, 'Well, that's competent. It's not exactly breaking any boundaries. It's not exactly transgressive. It's just a bunch of fake people in a room talking to each other. But maybe there's a value to that.'

People never read my books for the quality of the documentary value.

I think that writers are best served by sticking to their writing. Not having loads of theories about the best way to position the writing. I think that if the writing is good and the point of view is strong, the writing is going to take care of itself.

I've learned to really love revision over the years and worked hard to build up my craft muscle to make my revisions less and less painful with each book.

I don't read fiction.

You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make.

I love great writing.

In any good piece of writing, it should be easy enough to switch genders.

Even the best novelists are rarely congratulated on the quality of their observations about contemporary life.