Quotes from Carl Hiaasen

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.

Cab Mulcahy poured the coffee. Skip Wiley drank.

As for Dr. Remond Courtney, his golf swing was so unusual that from a distance he appeared to be beating a snake to death. It was a very violent golf swing for a psychiatrist. He managed an eight on the first hole and still won it by two strokes.

Team Rodent knows the tolerance level of its audience because it raised its audience. The fundamentalists' "boycott" of Disney is doomed to flop because Middle America isn't participating and doesn't, if you'll pardon the expression, give a rat's ass. Middle America completely trusts Mickey with sex, violence, and occasional unwholesomeness, as long as it's mildly entertaining.

New Yorkers," said Jim Tile, "think they've cornered the market on psychopaths. They don't know Florida.

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions

Barnette Wittlefield met with the commander-in-chief every morning at four-thirty a.m. bringing news of the latest subpoenas along with four bags of Egg McMuffins.

novels. I can't imagine living anywhere as corrupt, overrun, mismanaged, and freak-infested as Florida. I also can't imagine living anywhere as beautiful or so worth fighting for. Carl Hiaasen Vero Beach June 7, 2013

Buck wondered how Blister Krill had survived to middle age in a place as ethnically diverse and gun-crazy as Florida. He was confronted with the possibility that Blister had been a different person before becoming obsessed with Bayou Brethren. It was one thing to market a television program to attract low-class shit-kickers; it was another thing to create them.

Jerry Crosby didn't live on the island. He lived miles away on the mainland, in a western municipality that grandly called itself Royal Palm Beach.

Sit down, Skip. I'm not finished." Mulcahy stood up, brandishing the stack of columns. "You know what makes me sad? You're such a damn good writer, too good to be turning out shit like this. Something's happened the last few months. You've been slipping away. I think you're sick." Wiley winced. "Sick?

Buck Nance appeared ashen and deflated, for good reason. Blister was his creation--the ultimate white-trash nightmare.

Buck Nance used Lane Coolman's phone to call Krystal. 'Baby, I'm coming home soon,' he said. 'Who's this?' 'Aw, don't be like that.' 'Wait... now I remember, said his wife. 'You're the scumbag husband who keeps a whore on the side.' 'She's just another stalker. I swear to Christ.' 'Is Miracle her real name or is that what her pimp tagged her with?' 'She's a total psycho, Krystal. You can't believe a word she-' The line went dead.

A big farming operation like his was a challenging enterprise, relying as it did on rampant pollution and the systematic mistreatment of immigrant labor. For Red it was no small feat to keep the feds off his back while at the same time soaking taxpayers for lucrative crop subsidies and dirt-cheap loans that might or might not be repaid this century.

I took all your columns from the last four months," Mulcahy said, "and I gave them to Dr. Courtney, the psychiatrist. " "Jesus! He's a wacko, Cab. The guy has a thing for animals. I've heard this from seven or eight sources. Ducks and geese, stuff like that.

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.

He was gone, unglued, lost in a pathetic blubbering panic.

Jerry Crosby was looking out a window at the immaculate green yard, where a lawn worker's leaf blower had caught fire. The worker calmly heaved it in the swimming pool and ambled away.

He was lanky, silver-haired, seasonally Catholic and steeply neo-conservative. It was Kiki Pew's commiserative coddling that got him through the Obama years, though at times she feared that her excitable spouse might physically succumb from the day-to-day stress of having a black man in the Oval Office.

Every door and hallway reverberated with the nerve-stabbing whine of high-speed dental drills; soon Stranahan's molars started to throb, and he began to feel claustrophobic.

Congratulations. A new low.

During the last days of his governorship, Clinton Tyree had lobbied for a somewhat tougher law. His version would have required anyone who killed a manatee to immediately forfeit his boat (no matter how luxurious) and pay a ten-thousand dollar fine or go to jail for forty-five days. The Tyree Amendment would have also required the manatee killer to bury the dead animal himself, at a public ceremony. Not surprisingly, the governor's proposal was quietly rejected.

died during a hard freeze, was

As much as Sammy Tigertail cherished the Mark Knopfler guitar, embracing it made him think of the casino from whose garish walls it had been lifted. The great Osceola would not have allowed his people to put their name on such a monstrous palace of white greed; more likely he would have set a torch to it.