Explore Quotes by Daniel Woodrell

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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'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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.'