Quotes About Key West

Someone had told me, years ago, that Key West's latitude was the northernmost from which the Southern Cross was visible. I had glimpsed it just once, in 1980, while on a night swordfishing trip in the Gulf Stream. It hung a hand's width above the horizon in the southwest—four stars like the points of a crystal kite. On

I decide to go direct to Key West... I know the place quite well, and it's near the points in Florida that I wish to visit. I have an idea at present of doing some work but do not know how long that will last.

I can remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s how many men with AIDS I saw everywhere in Key West. There were hospices and medical supply stores geared to people with AIDS. It seemed that every sick man who could afford it had headed for the warmth and the tranquillity and the gay-friendliness of the island.

We lived on the Key West Army Base. Key West for me was a tropical island paradise.

Between planning family vacations and running away for novel-writing retreats, I've spent much of my adult life questing for the perfect beach escape, renting cottages all along the Florida Gulf and up and down the Atlantic Coast - as far north as Nags Head, as far south as Key West.

On the weekends, I would go down and play these clubs in Key West or West Palm Beach or surrounding areas of Florida and then I'd go back to school for the week.

Places I've lived since then had to have some kind of uniqueness and character about them. And logically Key West, and then Down Island. So, all of that stuff sort of had it's roots in New Orleans and went crazy.

One of the things Key West teaches is that disappointment and contentment can go together more easily than you would probably imagine.

There are towns, you know, for making money. Towns to start a career. Towns to go to college. Towns to raise a family. Key West is no damn good for any of that. Key West is to feel good and be happy. That's all.

The guy stood a yard inside the dark room and waited, blinking, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom after the hot whiteness of the Key West sun. It was June, dead-on four o'clock in the afternoon, the southernmost part of the United States. Way farther south than most of the Bahamas. A hot white sun and a fierce temperature. Reacher sat at his table in back and sipped water from a plastic bottle and waited.

I'm a Hemingway fan, so in a manner of speaking, I've been fishing with him already. But man, would I love to board Pilar in Key West and head south until we have a day-long battle with a tarpon, haul that bad boy up, then celebrate by telling lies over rum on a Cuban terrace.

If you're a beach person or a golfer, Key West is not for you. Most of the sand has been imported, and the water is shallow until you've waded far out, and all the way the sea floor is covered with yucky algae and sea grass.

I was in Key West, Florida, and I ate some key lime pie and the base of the pie had nuts in it. I'm allergic to nuts and I went into anaphylactic shock, which is life threatening, and ended up in hospital.

That's the greatest compliment I can get: when somebody from Key West says, 'Hey, Bubba.' That means I'm in!

Soon enough it was explained to Buck Nance that Key West was a bad location to be making fun of homosexuals, and also African-Americans. This bulletin was delivered by a 275-pound biker who happened to be both gay and black, and owned a right hand that fit easily around Buck's stringy, hirsute neck.

I had a passionate zest for Key West life in all of its little details. I'm not sure why or where that came from, but I was so excited to be there.

I didn't know who Ernest Hemingway was until I moved to Key West and visited his house on Whitehead Street," she said. "Then I started reading his books, and I saw something in one of them I never forgot. He said the test of all morality is whether you feel good or bad about something the morning after.

But that was Key West. It searched out and exploited the hairline crack in each person's stability and crowbarred it open.

Our complimentary dinner that evening was really quite nice. I have always found that free meals taste just a little bit better, and after two days of the rapacious greed of the Key West economy, this was succulent indeed. And

You said Brian is forcing us to go to Key West, whether we want to or not," I said. "And you said all the houses will be there. Other than that, you might as well be speaking Etruscan." Rita

It had enough room for all of us at a price we could easily pay off in ten years or so, which wasn't too bad, considering that it was in Key West and the town was founded by rapacious pirates.