Daniel Woodrell Quotes

I know people who have, until recently, lived with dirt floors. There are people who live way back off the grid, without electricity. Not a whole lot, but quite a few. That’s a choice for a lot of them. There might be a religious element in their isolation, at least with some of them.

I think all regions have had their peculiarities of speech rounded off by television, radio, and people travel so much more now.

I was thinking of my father’s family. I can find their graves, but not that much about them. They didn’t do anything notable enough to be in the records of newspapers.

I have a book in the pipeline of short stories. You want to hear an agent scream, say ‘I’m thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.’

I don’t think I can write a book as nihilistic as some of my early ones. They’re so bleak. I don’t think I would enjoy that as much anymore. You really become fixated on ways out.

When poetry is on the money, 12 words can slay you. I admire that greatly.

I liked my fellow Marines. I didn’t like pointless orders.

I was reading newspaper front pages from the 1930s, and I was taken aback. I’m not naive about American history, but I was a bit knocked off my feet by things that used to be on the front pages of newspapers.

The opening novel of the ‘Bayou Trilogy’ was the first one I finished.

We’d been living in the Arkansas Ozarks, then the Missouri Ozarks, because it is so inexpensive and does have natural wonders, but we shuffled things and moved to San Francisco, the corner of Dashiell Hammett and Pine.

You realize you’re alive while you’re alive, and you better notice it then, because later, it’s hard to see.

If I weren’t so lazy, I would have 14 books, not eight.

I realized there might be monetary or financial reasons to jump in and write a ‘Winter’s Bone Retriumphs’ or something, and nobody would object to me doing that in publishing. But it would be a waste of my time, and they always take a little longer than you thought they would take.

It’s called ‘The Outlaw Album,’ not ‘The Ozarks Album.’ These are stories that delve into different kinds of outlawry, from criminal acts to interior, or psychological, outlawry. The book is not meant to be a tapestry of the Ozarks.

I can’t say that dropping out of school at 16 to join the Marines was my best idea. On the other hand, maybe it was. Who knows?

I’ve been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books, I have to start a new direction.

In February of 1972, a snowstorm blew into Kansas City, and I decided to hitchhike to California. The roads were icy, snowflakes howling, and nobody would drive me to the highway, so I humped through the snow and ice and caught a ride with a concerned cop to the Kansas Turnpike.

I’ve bumped into at least three people in town who all insist ‘Winter’s Bone’ is about them.

When I started to be a writer, I was not going to run the risk of boring you.

I didn’t really expect to be coming to the Oscars.

I have a Ford Taurus, and I don’t care who knows it.

I guess it’s ridiculously romantic, but I wanted to be a full tilt, sink-or-swim writer.

I’m surviving and developing as a writer. I don’t know what brings you to mass attention in terms of sales. But I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with it. Of course if that changes, I’ll be comfortable with that. All I can do is write the best books I can.

I had gone to enlist in the Navy, but they had a long waiting list and no need for high-school dropouts.

I always gravitate towards anything from Ireland. With Irish lit, I love the use of language, but also in many instances, the Irish writers are writing about people and circumstances that I can relate to.

I am well aware that the writers of New York, London, and Toronto are more readily noticed, though the shadowy and potent Ozarks Literary Cabal does what it can for me, then nightly joins me for dinner and calls me ‘honey.’

One of the interesting things about the Ozarks is you just about don’t have street crime. It’s strictly between people who know each other. It really isn’t indiscriminate; it’s kind of between themselves.

I came back when I’d had a taste of other places and realized that I would never feel the same sense of connection to any place other than the Ozarks.

I like the idea of everybody knowing each other; you know why you’re doing things.

But I’ve been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction.

I love Shakespeare and the Greeks – learned a lot studying them at one time.

I’d just lie around all day. It’s the chemo, the poison they pump into you. Sometimes I’d be walking across the room and think, ‘There it is; I got to rest.’ And I had to, right then.

I had bill collectors chasing me. We were skipping from town to town, not leaving forwarding addresses. The agent couldn’t find me when he sold my book. He finally found me.

Earned a bachelor’s at 27, then an M.F.A. that is still completely unused and in mint condition, never taken out of the box.

I think my grandmother Woodrell was most responsible for my becoming a writer. She wasn’t quite literate, but was very proud that she attended school as far as the third grade. She worked as a maid, housekeeper and cook.

If you don’t allow yourself to change from book to book – take chances – it turns into a dullish job with no health benefits or pension plan and only intermittent paychecks.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Mississippi River and the way of life in these small river towns.

I just really like the verve and muscle of good crime fiction, the narrative punch of it. The underlying principle of good crime fiction is an insistence on a kind of root democracy. I’ve always responded to that notion.

I was born in West Plains, and we lived here till I was one. Then my dad needed to get a job, so we moved to the St. Louis area. I lived in St. Charles, on the Missouri River, till I was 15.

I have always loved short stories. I have been at least as influenced by the short story masters as I have been by novelists.