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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| f1badab | The likeness, my dear!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Why you're the spitting image of this naughty 'Molly Mitchell'!" | James Patterson | ||
| 32a3542 | I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. | Aldous Huxley | ||
| 1d97fdf | You know what this is? A test, that's what. That slippery, hot-blooded weasel is trying to push me as far as he can. He thinks I'm not tough enough. He wants mucho macho. He wants machetes and machine pistols and nightscopes. He wants us to dress in fatigues and crawl through minefields and bite the necks off live chickens. That's his idea of revolution. No subtlety, no wit, no goddamn style. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| d78348d | To sum up: Figure out what you're good at, and get better at it. Along the way, don't waste your time on people whose decency isn't apparent when you first meet for a cup of coffee. Be an astute judge of character, and learn to judge quickly. Read the news. Pay attention. Always aspire to act in a way that cancels out someone else's cruel or stupid behavior. Never stop worrying. Live each day as if your rent is due tomorrow. And always, a.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| edef5d7 | Bernal believed discipline was essential for revolution. Wiley, of course, believed just the opposite. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| f63a0e7 | So with the endorsement of the Chamber of Commerce, in 1980 Sparky Harper invited fifty travel writers from all newspapers all across North America to come to Miami during Orange Bowl Week and sail the Friendship Cruise. Of course, 1980 was the year of the Liberty City Riots and the Mariel Boatlift, so only nine travel writers showed up, several of them carrying guns for protection. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| a4b29c1 | Late on the night of August 27, with a warm breeze at his back and nine cold Budweisers in his belly, Keith Higstrom decided to go hunting. His friends declined to accompany him, as Keith was as clumsy and unreliable a shooter as he was a drunk. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| b3a6e9d | As a reporter, Brian Keyes had come to know B.D. Harper fairly well. There was nothing not to like; there simply was nothing much at all. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| c7fc679 | For years Harper had run his own successful public-relations firm, staging predictable dumb stunts like putting a snow machine on the beach in January or mailing a ripe Florida orange to every human being in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. This was in the boom days of Miami and, in a way, Sparky Harper had been a proud pioneer of the shameless, witless boosterism that made Florida grow. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 89be27e | The legs weren't hacked off with an ax, which is the most efficient way,' said Dr. Allen, pausing to choose his words. 'It appears from the wounds that Sparky's legs might have been removed by a large animal. They might actually have been... twisted off. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| a686e11 | When Erin arrived, she saw an old man stretched out on the floor. He was surrounded by young medical technicians in blue jumpsuits. One of them knelt beside the lifeless form, thumping the man's chest in perfect time to Janet Jackson's 'Rhythm Nation,' which was playing on the club speakers. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 05791e1 | Why didn't you just ring the doorbell?' Stoat said. 'Why break into the house, and why'd you bust the shower door?' 'To put you in the proper frame of mind,' the man replied. 'Also, I was in the mood for some serious goddamn noise. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 9aa0890 | Look, I'll tell you the whole story, everything, but first let me dry off and put on some clothes, please?' 'No, you stay right there.' The man rose and reached for the toilet paper. 'In my experience,' he said, hoisting his checkered kilt, 'men who are buck naked and scared nutless tend to be more forthcoming. They tend to have better memories. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 3b12254 | The hostess remembered three customers arriving in a black SUV the night before. One of the men, skinny but rough-looking, became belligerent because the restaurant served only beer and wine. The hostess said the loudmouth got wasted on sake and started tossing spring rolls in the air, trying to catch them in his mouth. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 5573fbe | Car salesman turned governor. How it fried Dick Artemus to hear himself described like that--the snotty implication being that all car salesman were cagey and duplicitous, unworthy of holding public office. At first Dick Artemus had fought back, pridefully pointing out that his dealership sold only Toyotas, the most popular and reliable automobile on the face of the planet! A quality vehicle, he'd said. Top rated by all the important cons.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| c7168ac | Montana turned out to be better than he had expected, wide-open and friendly, with a few exceptions. A desk clerk at the motel in Missoula shot him a hard look when she saw the name on the credit card. Being a Garcia from Miami wasn't easy these days. Some people automatically assumed you had six kilos in the trunk and a loaded Uzi under the front seat. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 807e3b6 | The first time the boy asked when his real dad was getting out of jail, Garcia took the small hand and said: 'Never, Andy.' When the boy asked why, Garcia said: 'Because your daddy shot a man between the eyes.' Andy appreciated the seriousness of the situation. His sister, Lynne, who was either a year older or a year younger, said maybe her dad had a good reason for shooting the other guy. A hundred thousand reasons, Garcia had said, but no.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 9d07dee | flap opened on one of the tents, and a gangly figure crawled out. It was Mrs. Starch. She rose slowly, brushing herself off, her eyes blazing at the sight of Nick and Marta. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| b758b2a | Bernard Beanstoop III, otherwise known as Bernie the Bean, who was only the most famous and most expensive criminal defense lawyer in Tampa. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| a28bc8d | After the first gunshot, they dove to the ground and pressed themselves flat. Then came two other shots, followed shortly by more. Nick was sure he heard one of the bullets zing off a nearby tree. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 36fdbe3 | One spring evening in 1896, a prominent Pennsylvanian named Hamilton Disston blew his brains out in a bathtub. He had become gravely depressed after depleting his inheritance on a grandiose campaign to drain 4 million acres of Florida swamp known as the Everglades. Although Disston died believing himself a failure, he was later proven a pioneer and an inspiration. In the years that followed, one version or another of his rapacious fantasy w.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| ac36374 | Since the medical board was made up mostly of other doctors, Rudy Graveline had fully expected exoneration--physicians stick together like shit on a shoe. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 7e175c9 | The board immediately reinstated Rudy's license and sealed all the records from the public and the press--thus honoring the long-held philosophy of Florida's medical establishment that the last persons who need to know about a doctor's incompetence are the patients. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 28703cb | Lower your sights, boy,' he said to Joe Winder. 'I agree, justice is probably out of the question. But we can damn sure ruin their day. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 42b0846 | Some crazy shithead with a .38--it's the story of America, isn't it?' 'We live in violent times. That's what they say.' 'Guys like that, they give violence a bad name. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 296bd91 | Hey, where's your girlfriend? The one that was down at Flamingo?" "Oh, she's home cleaning the machine guns." Tool wasn't sure if the guy was joking. Then, out of the blue, it hit him--that's who the picture on the altar looked like: the blackmailer's girlfriend." | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| a3634b9 | Like everything else at the Amazing Kingdom, the Vole Project had begun as a scheme to compete with Walt Disney World. Years earlier, Disney had tried to save the dusky seaside sparrow, a small marsh bird whose habitat was being wiped out by overdevelopment along Florida's coastline. With much fanfare, Disney had unveiled a captive-breeding program for the last two surviving specimens of the dusky. Unfortunately, the last two surviving spec.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 6605674 | Erin thought, ludicrously, of how disappointed her mother would be. When one's only daughter is hacked to death wearing a sequined bra top and a G-string--well, there's really no way to explain it to one's friends at the orchid club. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| cc60dcd | Confrontation,' he declared, 'is the essence of nature!' He shook his silvery braid loose and let his hair stream out behind him. 'Confrontation is the rhythm of life,' he went on. 'In nature violence is pure and purposeful, one species against another in an act of survival!' Terrific, Decker thought. Marlin Perkins on PCP. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 8850ca5 | Thank God they didn't know about it, all those people who feared and needed and sucked up to Palmer Stoat, big-time lobbyist. All those important men and women clogging up his voice mail in Tallahassee... the mayor of Orlando, seeking Stoat's deft hand in obtaining $45 million in federal highway funds--Disney World, demanding yet another exit off Interstate 4; the president of a slot machine company, imploring Stoat to arrange a private din.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 16385d4 | Stoat himself was registered independent, but he hadn't stepped inside a voting booth in fourteen years. He couldn't take the concept seriously; he knew too much. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| f2c2a0f | Ricca, the witch, was alive. God only knew what Red Hammernut was up to. The blackmailer wanted the money tomorrow night. And topping it all was the videocassette that had been waiting on Charles Perrone's doorstep when he returned home from church. The tape was grainy and underlit, but the images were sufficiently distinct that Chaz instantly realized what he was watching. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 723cf4e | Andrew couldn't stand politics and generally detested the senators and congressmen who paid so exorbitantly for his image-shaping skills. Desie came to admire Andrew for hating his own work--only a highly principled man would stand up and admit to wasting his God-given talent on something so shallow, manipulative and deceptive as a thirty-second campaign commercial. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 7ba4e6c | Nietzsche? | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 49c1027 | Poison," said Rose Jewell with a frown. "No thanks." She was about forty years old and fearlessly attractive. The detective office had come to a standstill when she'd walked in--white cotton pullover, tight stonewashed jeans, high heels. Her hair was a wattage of blond unknown in Minnesota, the land of blondes. Even Rolvaag was slightly nervous." | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| ed128da | Chaz had proudly informed her that he was a biologist, and that he was attending a convention of distinguished scientists working to save the Everglades. He'd further confided that he was supposed to be taking a VIP safari tour of the Animal Kingdom but was instead sneaking out to play Bay Hill, the favorite hometown golf course of none other than Tiger Woods. Joey had been attracted to Chaz not only by his good looks, but by his involvemen.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| f8d6342 | What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic. | Aldous Huxley | ||
| 501964c | To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong. | Aldous Huxley | ||
| 6766e44 | Her most distinct memories of their first twelve months of marriage were scenes of reliably torrid sex, which turned out to be Chaz's singular shining talent. It was also his obsession. During their more revelatory second year together, Joey came to realize that she'd mistaken her husband's indefatigable urge to rut for ardor, when, in truth, for him it was no more personal than isometrics. She also became acutely aware that Chaz did not re.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 8256237 | Chaz thought that he would eventually charm his new bride into sharing her vast inheritance. He had pictured the intimate ceremony taking place in the bedroom, of course, after a night of athletic lovemaking--Joey, still aglow, unfolding the pre-nup and holding it to the flame of a lilac-scented candle. It had never happened, though, and after nearly two years of waiting Chaz had given up hope. Joey wasn't hoarding the family fortune so muc.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 13a57a5 | Stranahan hadn't wanted to give up his job, but it had been discreetly explained that for political reasons the state attorney could not keep on staff an investigator (even a productive one) who had killed a duly elected judge (even a crooked one). So Stranahan had accepted the ludicrous buyout and purchased himself an old wooden stilt house in Biscayne Bay, where he had lived mostly unmolested for years until Hurricane Andrew smashed the p.. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 5ccd0f3 | Stranahan didn't consider himself an eccentric or a hermit, even though at age fifty-three he lived alone on an island at the edge of the Atlantic with no landline, satellite dish or personal computer. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 9e8fab4 | Detective Karl Rolvaag belonged in the Midwest. This he knew in his heart, and he was reminded of it every day when he went to work. | Carl Hiaasen | ||
| 04123b6 | The detective had moved to Fort Lauderdale from St. Paul because his wife had inexplicably yearned to experience humidity. A decade later she was back in the Twin Cities and Rolvaag was still in Florida, divorced and sweating like a hog for eleven and a half months of the year. | Carl Hiaasen |