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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Daniel Woodrell Quotes

Most of my characters aren’t hillbillies anyway. Let’s just call them proletariat with a disposition towards criminal activity.

– Daniel Woodrell

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

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

I’m not from the movie world. I’m from the book world.

– Daniel Woodrell

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.’

– Daniel Woodrell

There’s an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction – a sweet spot there.

– Daniel Woodrell

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

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

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

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

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

– Daniel Woodrell

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

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

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

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

– Daniel Woodrell

I’m very attracted to poetry for all the reasons someone likes poetry. The notion of compression seems to fit my personality.

– Daniel Woodrell

I’m always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters.

– Daniel Woodrell

I always loved the verve and vivacity of pulp and I kind of merged it with my own interest in family stories.

– Daniel Woodrell

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.

– Daniel Woodrell

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

– Daniel Woodrell

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

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

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

– Daniel Woodrell

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

– Daniel Woodrell

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

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

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

– Daniel Woodrell

There are people so alienated from the mainstream of American culture that it’s like a parallel universe. They don’t expect anything but trouble from the square world. Every time they interact with that world, they’re given a ticket, sent to jail, drafted. It’s never good. So they live by a separate value system.

– Daniel Woodrell

I felt like a number of things in me as a writer just clicked.

– Daniel Woodrell

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

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