Author Birthday – 1 November – Kinky Friedman

Kinky Friedman was born on 31 November 1944 and died on 27 June 2024.

Kinky Friedman Quotes

1. I like to write between the lines. I like to look deeply into myself, which some people confuse with self-absorption. But I believe that if you look deeply inside yourself, you will find everybody else.
2. I like mysteries. They provide some kind of resolution, mysteries do. I find it very comforting to tie up things at the end. It gives me a kind of peace.
3. I have no real discipline whatsoever.
4. I always write in the first person—with the exception of a couple of non-fiction works. For one thing, mystery writing, the kind I like anyway, is usually done in the first person. It also lets you play a little game with the reader. About midway through the book, the reader realizes that he is running ten steps ahead of the Kinkster, but the author is ten steps ahead of him.
5. The problem of the mystery genre is that most people do not take it seriously. I could be writing great literature. Some of it, I am sure, is great. It could be very poetic. And it would be lost like pearls in the snow. So that is the problem.
6. I kind of write with an utter disregard for anybody, including myself.
7. My motivation for getting into writing was desperation. That turned out to be just fine, because I think you have to be pretty miserable to be a decent writer.
8. The bits of real life serve as guideposts for the stories I want to tell, and I’ve always felt the best fiction is a great vehicle for truth — often better than actually trying to tell the truth.
9. The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship. (Cowboy Logic: The Wit and Wisdom of Kinky Friedman)

Source for quotes 1-5: Conversations With Texas Writers and 6: Publishers Weekly and 7-8: Grammy

Kinky Friedman was an American novelist, humourist, and journalist. He was best known for his satirical detective novels, particularly the Kinky Friedman Mystery series, which featured a fictionalised version of himself as a detective solving crimes in New York City. His writing combined crime fiction with sharp humour, social satire, and witty observations. His novels include Greenwich Killing Time, Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola, Armadillos and Old Lace, and God Bless John Wayne. He also wrote humorous nonfiction, including Kinky Friedman’s Guide to Texas Etiquette and The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic. He contributed articles to Rolling Stone and Texas Monthly. Beyond writing, Friedman was also a country singer-songwriter, political satirist, and occasional actor, known for his irreverent humour and outspoken personality.

Source for image: Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kinky_friedman_2006.jpg

by Amanda Patterson
Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: The Complete Author Birthday Calendar