Quotes from Carl Hiaasen

So that's your man? The 'talent' you manage?' 'He had a bad night.' Coolman said tightly. Merry cackled. 'A bad night? The dude's a total homophobe! Also a bigot!' 'There's a culture gap, that's all.' 'No, it's a decency gap, Bob! Your client's a flaming a-hole! What's the matter with you? I'm so disappointed.' Coolman had received other morality lectures, though never from a professional criminal.

Bernard Beanstoop III, otherwise known as Bernie the Bean, who was only the most famous and most expensive criminal defense lawyer in Tampa.

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.' That's from Emerson, by the way. All I was hoping to do is stretch some goddamn minds.

In other words, we saved an animal from extinction just so we could start killing it again. How messed up is that?

Mockingbird sometimes found it hard to believe this was the same man she'd married; he looked like a different person now—as if someone had put a fire hose up his ass and inflated him with meringue.

The dog proved to be as dumb and stubborn as a mud fence, so Stranahan had named him Strom.

Nature always gets the last word. That's not my line. I read it in a magazine article written by a rock climber. His point was that nature is as coldhearted as it is beautiful, and that forces beyond our understanding can deliver a random life-or-death surprise at any moment.

The detective had moved to Fort Lauderdale from St. Paul because his wife had inexplicably yearned to experience humidity.

It was a buoyant and eager postgraduate who arrived at the Rosenstiel campus on Virginia Key, for he had grandly envisioned himself sailing the lazy tropics on a schooner, tracking pods of playful bottlenosed dolphins. In this fantasy, Chaz held binoculars in one hand and a frosty margarita in the other.

he was bitten in the groin by a Belgian shepherd trainee named Kong, and he required three operations, culminating in a scrotal graft from a Brahma steer.

At graduation, the entire Rosenstiel faculty rose as one to cheer Chaz as he crossed the stage, so elated were they to see the last of him.

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.

From then on the sisters were unstoppable, the go-to team for celebrities in mid-flameout. When Cherry Pye's high-paid publicist jumped ship--after accompanying her to an NPR interview in which she pretended to deep-throat the microphone--the rocket ship was already on fire.

Donald Trump. I

I wouldn't trust the guy alone with my bowling ball, that's what a horndog he is.

Buck stared at this degenerate ambassador for his own popularity, wondering how many other Brethren fans were homicidal, nutjob stalkers.

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.

IMPROVE ONE'S SELF, IMPROVE ONE'S FACE.

Don't you get it? It doesn't fucking matter whether he's right or not. That's the scary part.

Spending time with Benny the Blister had shaken Buck Nance's confidence in the superiority of the white male. He and his brothers had clung to such views since their Romberg youth, warped by their father's fulminations. While redneck stardom had exposed Buck to many white fans who were poor advertisements for a master race, Blister stood out as one of the worst specimens he'd ever met: stupid, reckless, dirty, and delusional. And that's when he was stone sober.

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.

cell phone the night he died. She'd obtained this key information

At heart Chaz Perrone was irrefutably a cheat and a maggot, but he had always shunned violence as dutifully as a Quaker elder. Nobody who knew him, including his few friends, would have imagined him capable of homicide. Chaz himself was somewhat amazed that he'd actually gone through with it.

Stranahan told her not to mistake arrogance for pride. A guy like Chaz can revive his ego with the palm of his hand.