Daniel Woodrell Quotes & Sayings

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

MOTHER NATURE was laying down some Law out there in the bayou night, and as befits the order of things, large feathered creatures dove off high branches, swooped low and stuck talons in smaller furry meals, and bandit-eyed coons came stealthily out of hollow logs and glommed finned, scaly chow from the still, brackish shallows, while all those things that slither waited, coiled, for the passing appearance of any prey absentminded, and where the bayou waters butted against land and a screened porch overlooked the boggy stage for these food-chain theatricals, Emil Jadick sat on the arm of the couch and wrapped up a lecture that had been real Type A in tone and content. He said, And if either of you fucks up because you ain't been listenin' to me, I'll take you off the calendar myself, understood? — Daniel Woodrell

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

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

Your palms break sweat and you sit there, needy, while your work ethic and character are available for comment from strangers you wouldn't share a joint with at a blues festival. — Daniel Woodrell

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

Can't none of this be new to you. — Daniel Woodrell

The great name of the Dollys was Milton, and ... if you named a son Milton it was a decision that attempted to chart the life he'd live before he even stepped into it, for among Dollys the name carried expectations and history ... Jessops, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the beaten Dolly path to the shadowed place, live and die in keeping with those blood-line customs fiercest held.
Ree and Mom both had shouted and shouted and shouted against Harold becomeing a Milton, since Sonny was already a Jessop ... Ree'd a thousand times wished she'd fought longer for sonny, Shouted him into an Adam or Leotis or Eugene, shouted until he was named to expect choices. — Daniel Woodrell

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

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

He was a man with a tin-ear present who dreamed of a rock-opera future. — Daniel Woodrell

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

I ain't shit! I ain't shit! shouts your brain, and this place proves the point. — Daniel Woodrell

The fella had wandered over to where I could totally see him, face on, in decent light, and how he looked - well, it ain't easy for me to say out loud.
He's the kind of fella that if he was to make it to the top based only on his looks you'd still have to say he deserved it. Hoodoo sculptors and horny witches knitted that boy, put his bone and sinew in the most fabulous order. Dark-haired, green-eyed, with face bones delicate and dramatic both. If your ex had his lips you'd still be married. His size was somewhat smallish, but he was otherwise for certain the most beautiful boy I ever had seen. I'm afraid "beautiful" is the only word I can make work here, and I'm not bent or nothin', but beautiful is the truth. — Daniel Woodrell

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again. — Daniel Woodrell

I slept for over a full day, as you know, but I won't say I rested. — Daniel Woodrell

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

As the ample Hedda, who disguised her ampleness behind a billow of yellow summer dress, told it, her life up 'til she hoisted this very bloody mary in her hand was a convoluted tale of bubbly love gone flat, fine talents unnoticed and similarly woeful bullshit. — Daniel Woodrell

I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such. — Daniel Woodrell

It was at this moment, chided by his old and present rival, that Shade decided it was time to revert to the shitkicker verities. Brazen dash, rough talk, and an ounce or two of mean were clearly required. — Daniel Woodrell

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

She would never cry where her tears might be seen and counted against her. — 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

Sammy, wouldn't you like to add up to something? In the future? Amount to something?"
"Naw. I just figure to roll on, stackin' days, you know, till the day I fuck up big enough the future gets canceled. Or else all planned out for me, maybe. There's a somewhat likely chance of that."
"Man, Sammy, I can't live thinking that way"
"Well,I don't think about it. — Daniel Woodrell

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

There's an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction - a sweet spot there. — Daniel Woodrell

She dressed to cast her daughter in a frumpy light. — 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

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

I like the idea of everybody knowing each other; you know why you're doing things. — Daniel Woodrell

I liked my fellow Marines. I didn't like pointless orders. — Daniel Woodrell

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered. — Daniel Woodrell

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

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

I hate to fall back on weird to describe them, but goofy is too weak, and strange sounds too sensible. — 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

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

Texas humor and Southern humor are pretty similar. — Daniel Woodrell

I love Shakespeare and the Greeks - learned a lot studying them at one time. — Daniel Woodrell

I think one of our cardinal fuckups is how we insist that even vicious whimsical crazy shit needs to make sense, add up, belong to a reason. We lay this pain on ourselves
there must be a reason behind this horror, there must, but I ain't adequate to findin' it, and that's my fault, so torture me some more. — Daniel Woodrell

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

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

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

Honesty can siphon off a few regrets and resentments if you tap in to it. Let that sink in. — Daniel Woodrell

That water's colder'n hell!"
That's what makes it good. That's what makes it help all your bruises'n bumps'n stuff."
It's colder'n a goddam witch's tit in there! — Daniel Woodrell

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

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

I've bumped into at least three people in town who all insist 'Winter's Bone' is about them. — Daniel Woodrell

You got to be ready to die every day - then you got a chance. — Daniel Woodrell

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. — Daniel Woodrell

I have a Ford Taurus, and I don't care who knows it. — Daniel Woodrell

Thump Milton loomed over Ree, a fabled man, his face a monument of Ozark stone, with juts and angles and cold shaded parts the sun never touched. — Daniel Woodrell

The pain was shrill enough, but the idea of a finger of mine twitching about, lost in chicken-pecked dust, was more terrible. — Daniel Woodrell

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

YOU WEREN'T born choking on no silver spoon, you know how it goes when you go looking for a job and you need one: You wait in the first indifferent room, ink in the forms, apply in another room with linoleum that's waxy and squeaks and overhead lights that don't miss a thing; then there's the desk and the person behind it who thinks he's an admiral, or it's a she and she thinks she's now in line for the throne to somewhere, and next you're kissing ass and aw-shucksing toward the desk, telling how bad all your life you've been wanting to be night janitor in a chemical plant, or hog wrangler in a slaughterhouse, or pizza delivery boy, how you've laid awake in bed gettin' goose bumps just from imagining how high and wide your life might someday be lived if ever you could average five dollars and forty cents an hour. But — Daniel Woodrell

My father was a salesman, and I always said I wouldn't be one. — Daniel Woodrell

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. — Daniel Woodrell

Fading light buttered the ridges until shadows licked them clean and they were lost to nightfall. — Daniel Woodrell

In the morning we shed our blue sheep's clothing. Our border shirts came out of satchels and onto our backs. We preferred this means of dress for it was more flatout and honest. The shirts were large with pistol pockets, and usually colored red or dun. Many had been embroidered with ornate stitching by loving women some were blessed enough to have. Mine was plain, but well broken in. I can think of no more chilling a sight than that of myself all astride my big bay horse with six or eight pistols dangling from my saddle, my rebel locks aloft on the breeze and a whoopish yell on my lips. When my awful costume was multiplied by that of my comrades, we stopped feint hearts just by our mode of dread stylishness. — Daniel Woodrell

I said shut up once already, with my mouth. — Daniel Woodrell

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

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

I felt like a number of things in me as a writer just clicked. — 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'm very attracted to poetry for all the reasons someone likes poetry. The notion of compression seems to fit my personality. — Daniel Woodrell

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

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

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

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

You know, I'm very near to bein' normal, but I just can't get over the hump. — Daniel Woodrell

Shade said as he stepped down the hall, "is another of the 'eternal boy's' major concerns, if you can believe it." The officer sat down and swung his feet to the desktop. "I probably could," he said, "but I think I'll pass." Blanchette leaned on Shade's arm, a pantomime of crumbling health, and swatted at his — Daniel Woodrell

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

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

Moons of ache glowed in spaces of her meat and when she moved the moons banged together and stunned. — Daniel Woodrell

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

You see the insides of a classier world like that and it sets your own to spinning off-balance, and a tireless gnawing discontent gets to snacking on your guts and spirit. This caliber of a place makes you want to discriminate against yourself, basically, as it reveals you as such a loser. A tiny mote of nothin' much just here to muss up the planet these worthies lived so grandly on and wished they could keep clean of you and yours. I ain't shit! I ain't shit! shouts your brain, and this place proves the point. Oh, — Daniel Woodrell

I think there are some folks who don't particularly like what I have to say, but on the whole, the reaction has been very positive. — Daniel Woodrell

Stained raincoats, I reckon." "And shitpaper stuck to their shoes. — Daniel Woodrell

I'd get lost without the weight of you two on my shoulders. — Daniel Woodrell

No god craves weaklings. — 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 always been fascinated by the Mississippi River and the way of life in these small river towns. — Daniel Woodrell

Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist. — 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

Nobody cares for getting belittled by a person you've had sex with. A person you've licked all over. Nobody wants to sit there and get run down too far by somebody who gives them a hard-on. — Daniel Woodrell

Of the ready green on a blue felt top. The gentlemen who had assembled around it for an evening of high-stakes Hold 'Em were well dressed, well fed, and well heeled, but now their mouths hung loose and their poolside tans paled. "Hands on the table, guys," Jadick said. "And don't any of you act one-armed." A short man with an air of compact power, Jadick moved with brisk precision and spoke calmly. He pulled back the hammers on his archaic but awesome weapon and said, "Scoop the fuckin' manna, boys." "Check," said Dean Pugh. He and Cecil Byrne, his fellow Wingman, went slowly around the table — Daniel Woodrell

I'm always writing about character first. Plot, such as it is, comes from the characters. — Daniel Woodrell

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

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

The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas. — Daniel Woodrell

I FELL DEEP down in there, until this bright light raised me from sleep. Coming out of a pit such as that, you think the bright light could be God or a cop on patrol. — Daniel Woodrell

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

I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits. — Daniel Woodrell

I have tried to outline, but all that seems to guarantee is that the book will not much resemble the outline, so I long ago stopped. I never really know where a book is going, and each new book has it's own voice - and I have to be available to hear it. That's what can be frustrating between novels - the way I wrote any previous book won't work with this one. I'll make notes, do little sketches of characters or places, but every new book has to be discovered, and maps to the older books won't help much. — 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

The World Ain't No Day-care Center. — Daniel Woodrell