Top 100 Daniel Woodrell Quotes
#1. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#2. I'm very attracted to poetry for all the reasons someone likes poetry. The notion of compression seems to fit my personality.
Daniel Woodrell
#3. Whatever are we to do about you, baby girl? Huh?' 'Kill me, I guess.' 'That idea has been said already. Got'ny other ones?' 'Help me. Ain't nobody said that idea yet, have they?
Daniel Woodrell
#4. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#5. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#7. This floor, here? I remember when this floor here used to get to jumping' like a fuckin' bunny from all the dancing'. Everybody dancing' around all night, stoned out of their minds - and it always was the happy kind of stoned back then.
Daniel Woodrell
#8. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#10. I was basically raised to look for chances to get even with several families for stuff that happened 30 or 40 years before I was born.
Daniel Woodrell
#11. This happens to me all the time: I think I'm working on one thing, but this other thing, whether I want it to or not, keeps coming through.
Daniel Woodrell
#12. I don't want to be callous about it, but we all seemed to get over the Oklahoma bombing pretty quickly, and we're never going to get over 9/11.
Daniel Woodrell
#13. The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can't live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin' wide in the turns.
Daniel Woodrell
#14. But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction.
Daniel Woodrell
#15. I like the idea of everybody knowing each other; you know why you're doing things.
Daniel Woodrell
#16. For a long time, I didn't think I wanted to live in the Ozarks or write about the region. It seemed to be a sure recipe for obscurity, and to be obscure was not my conscious ambition.
Daniel Woodrell
#17. The bodies draped down through the leaves like rancid baubles in the locks of a horrible harlot.
Daniel Woodrell
#18. Boys popped wheelies that landed very near the men, then exercised their audacity by requesting quarters to stop. "I could scuff your shoes for nothin'," they said, "but when a quarter's
Daniel Woodrell
#19. I had gone to enlist in the Navy, but they had a long waiting list and no need for high-school dropouts.
Daniel Woodrell
#20. Nobody here wants to be awful," he said. He hopped a little as he zipped up. "It's just nobody here knows all the rules yet, and that makes a rocky time.
Daniel Woodrell
#21. 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.'
Daniel Woodrell
#22. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#24. The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.
Daniel Woodrell
#25. Most of my characters aren't hillbillies anyway. Let's just call them proletariat with a disposition towards criminal activity.
Daniel Woodrell
#26. I always loved the verve and vivacity of pulp and I kind of merged it with my own interest in family stories.
Daniel Woodrell
#27. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#28. Ledoux's face was pebbled with mosquito bites. Forget the Cutter's and that means every needle-nose bug in the woods spare-changing you for blood like cornerboy hustlers spotting a strung-out Kennedy trying to score on Seventh. Like you got plenty to give.
Daniel Woodrell
#29. I'd get lost without the weight of you two on my shoulders.
Daniel Woodrell
#30. On his next return to this world, Duncan Cobb, oldest son, faithless cousin, cautious lover, and pal of killers, awoke infused with the lucidity born of no escape, and a mortal dose of honesty.
Daniel Woodrell
#31. I've always been fascinated by the Mississippi River and the way of life in these small river towns.
Daniel Woodrell
#32. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#33. I hate to fall back on weird to describe them, but goofy is too weak, and strange sounds too sensible.
Daniel Woodrell
#34. This new spot for life might be but a short journey as a winged creature covers it, that is often said, but, oh, Lord, as you know, I had not the wings, and it is a hot, hard ride by road.
Daniel Woodrell
#35. Her right hand held a bottle of Pepsi that she'd clogged with peanuts and called a late lunch.
Daniel Woodrell
#36. Honesty can siphon off a few regrets and resentments if you tap in to it. Let that sink in.
Daniel Woodrell
#37. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#38. 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?
Daniel Woodrell
#39. Tip began to nod, then shook his head. I could be eight kinds of crooked, there, piglet, but I ain't never been no kind of dumb.
Daniel Woodrell
#40. Before all that long, you start telling those near to you that you went on interviews that turned out sorry when factually you never even made the phone call.
Daniel Woodrell
#41. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#43. Mike Rondeau, a tall drink of a man sloshed into a squat glass, with a belt that could double as a lasso and a volume of ambitious lies that he called his life, came in the door and laughed.
Daniel Woodrell
#44. I rise near dawn, make a strong cup of coffee, wander to my desk and come fully awake by reading something written the day before.
Daniel Woodrell
#45. Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall.
Daniel Woodrell
#46. I felt like a number of things in me as a writer just clicked.
Daniel Woodrell
#47. I think all regions have had their peculiarities of speech rounded off by television, radio, and people travel so much more now.
Daniel Woodrell
#48. It was in a grim room on Eddy Street that I finally opened 'A Moveable Feast.' I read it all overnight. I read it again the next day.
Daniel Woodrell
#49. The Dolly's around here can't be seen to coddle a snitch's family
that's the always been our way. We're old blood, us people, and our ways was set firm long before hot shot baby Jesus ever even burped milk'n sh*& yellow.
Daniel Woodrell
#50. Just because it's got a gun doesn't make it a crime novel, and just because there's a horse doesn't make it a western.
Daniel Woodrell
#51. Babies don't know anything but nipples and lullabies. they splash out looks of wonder on anybody whether they merit it or not.
Daniel Woodrell
#52. He was a man with a tin-ear present who dreamed of a rock-opera future.
Daniel Woodrell
#53. When poetry is on the money, 12 words can slay you. I admire that greatly.
Daniel Woodrell
#54. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#55. There's an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction - a sweet spot there.
Daniel Woodrell
#56. Oys by civil calculations, we had by now roughed up the swami and slept where the elephant shits, Shocking us would have required some kind of genius.
Woe To Live On
Daniel Woodrell
#57. I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits.
Daniel Woodrell
#58. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#59. Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.
Daniel Woodrell
#60. The opening novel of the 'Bayou Trilogy' was the first one I finished.
Daniel Woodrell
#61. When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take my work to the actual reading public.
Daniel Woodrell
#62. Grunt work is my main calling, but I like to be dead when I do it.
Daniel Woodrell
#63. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#64. If I weren't so lazy, I would have 14 books, not eight.
Daniel Woodrell
#65. The town of St. Charles near St. Louis was founded by a trapper named Blanchette. There is a section that's called Frenchtown on historical markers.
Daniel Woodrell
#66. I learned my values. It's better to be poor than to be beholden. Wealth is not the object of life. You should be polite as long as possible, and when you can't be polite anymore, don't run.
Daniel Woodrell
#67. Wanda Bone Bouvier had that thing that makes a hound leap against its cage. It ws a quality that was partly a bonus from nature and partly learned from cheesecake calendars and Tanya Tucker albums.
Daniel Woodrell
#68. You realize you're alive while you're alive, and you better notice it then, because later, it's hard to see.
Daniel Woodrell
#69. Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot.
Daniel Woodrell
#71. I'm always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters.
Daniel Woodrell
#73. I joined the Marines the week I turned 17, and that led to a few experiences that might qualify as adventure - eye of the beholder.
Daniel Woodrell
#74. Taggin' that name on you, that was like casting a curse on you. Oh, baby, your ma made a sorry, shitty prediction on your whole life and hung a name on you that would help the sorry, shitty stuff come true."
"You ain't bringin' me any news.
Daniel Woodrell
#75. Bauer was a large, flat-topped man, with pale skin that had been acned and pitted so that it resembled a cob cleaned of corn, eyes the color of snuff, and the general expression of a natural-born straw boss.
Daniel Woodrell
#76. I love Shakespeare and the Greeks - learned a lot studying them at one time.
Daniel Woodrell
#77. I have always loved short stories. I have been at least as influenced by the short story masters as I have been by novelists.
Daniel Woodrell
#79. I'd met some awfully tough gals in my life, and I find them compelling, if I don't have to socialize with them too much.
Daniel Woodrell
#80. I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such.
Daniel Woodrell
#81. You know, I'm very near to bein' normal, but I just can't get over the hump.
Daniel Woodrell
#82. He's got that 'born to lose and lose violently' air about him. That's good.
Daniel Woodrell
#83. Then she moved backwards, deeper into the shadow. All I could see was that she was barely there, like something you almost recall: the Pledge of Allegiance, your daddy's real name.
Daniel Woodrell
#84. When I started to be a writer, I was not going to run the risk of boring you.
Daniel Woodrell
#85. I've bumped into at least three people in town who all insist 'Winter's Bone' is about them.
Daniel Woodrell
#86. I guess it's ridiculously romantic, but I wanted to be a full tilt, sink-or-swim writer.
Daniel Woodrell
#87. I remember all the writers I started with who I was embarrassed to be around - they were so much better than me. A lot of them are no longer writing. I guess they were better rounded and had other options. Due to social discomfort, I only had the one road.
Daniel Woodrell
#88. As a high-school drop-out, I knew I wanted to write, but I wasn't overly confident that I was going to be writing anything serious. I was happy enough with the idea that I could be a penny-a-word guy and survive.
Daniel Woodrell
#89. I tell the story by feel most of the time, and I am not much given to labyrinthian digressions but seem to be naturally drawn to compression and pace, and the feelings come about on their own.
Daniel Woodrell
#90. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
#91. This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.
Daniel Woodrell
#92. I ain't shit! I ain't shit! shouts your brain, and this place proves the point.
Daniel Woodrell
#93. I liked my fellow Marines. I didn't like pointless orders.
Daniel Woodrell
#94. He was almost twenty and Ree knew most girls would call him handsome or dreamy or some such. Sandy hair, blue eyes, put together strong, with bright teeth and one of those smiles.
Daniel Woodrell
#95. Ree sat chilled inside her squat tent. To occupy her mind, she decided to name all the Miltons: Thump, Blond, Catfish, Spider, Whoop, Rooster, Scrap ... Lefty, Dog, Punch, Pinkeye, Momsy ... Cotton, Hog-jaw, Ten Penny, Peashot ...
Daniel Woodrell
#96. Moons of ache glowed in spaces of her meat and when she moved the moons banged together and stunned.
Daniel Woodrell
#97. Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could.
Daniel Woodrell
#99. A person has to show some spirit
fate just about never shines kindly on chickenshits.
Daniel Woodrell
#100. 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.
Daniel Woodrell
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