Carl Hiaasen Quotes

I try not to stand on a soapbox and scream. That's boring. You've got to be funny sometimes. All my humor comes from anger. Satire is terrific therapy. Making people laugh is a joy, but making them think about something serious is the ultimate reward.

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 bottle-nosed dolphins. In this fantasy Chaz held binoculars in one hand and a frosty margarita in the other. (Chapter 5)

Honey, sometimes you’re going to be faced with situations where the line isn’t clear between what’s right and what’s wrong. Your heart will tell you to do one thing, and your brain will tell you to do something different. In the end, all that’s left is to look at both sides and go with your best judgment. (Chapter 13)

At first she had disliked the code name chosen for her by the Secret Service. Then she'd watched a YouTube video about actual mockingbirds, which were crafty, graceful, and melodious. Like me, she thought. Once upon a time. The President's Secret Service code name was "Mastodon." He loved it. "Perfect!" he'd boomed when he was told. "Fearless, smart, and tough!" And enormous, she'd said to herself. Don't forget f**king enormous. On only his second day in the White House, the President had ordered his Chief of Staff to arrange a trip to the National Zoo for a close-up look at a real mastodon. The Chief of Staff wasn't brave enough to tell the President the truth, so he cooked up a story that the Zoo's beloved mastodon herd was on loan to a wildlife park in Christchurch, New Zealand. The President had scowled, muttered something about "those snotty Kiwis" and soon gotten sidetracked by another daft notion. (Chapter 5)

Most opinion columnists start out as street reporters, an experience vital to understanding how things really work as opposed to how they should. My own approach to the column — drawn from the incomparable , and others — was simple: If what I wrote wasn’t pissing off somebody, I probably wasn’t doing my job. Take a sharp-edged stand on any issue, and the other side seethes. Show me a columnist who doesn’t get hate mail, and I’ll show you someone who’s writing about the pesky worms on his tomato plants.

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 over-development 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 specimens were both males, and even the wizards of Disney could not induce the scientific miracle of homosexual procreation. Eventually the sparrow fell to extinction, but the Disney organization won gobs of fawning publicity for its conservation efforts. (Chapter 2)

Angie tried not to think much about politics. It didn't seem to matter who was in power. Nothing got better in the besieged, breathtaking world she cared about most. The Everglades would never be the lush, unbroken river it once was; the shallows of Florida Bay would never be as pure and sparkling with fish; the bleached, dying reefs of the Keys would never bloom back to life. Being overrun and exploited was the historical fate of places so rare and beautiful. Every year, Angie diligently wrote checks to the Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund, but she was too much of a loner to jump into the fray. No meetings, no rallies, no Facebook petitions. Never once had she fired off an angry letter to a congressman or a county commissioner. Sometimes she wondered if she was too cynical or just too lazy. The sitting President of the United States was a soulless imbecile who hated the outdoors, but in Angie's view, at this point Teddy Roosevelt himself couldn't turn the tide if he came back from the dead. All the treasured wilderness that had been sacrificed at the altar of growth was gone for all time. More disappeared every day. Nothing ever changed, except the speed of destruction, and only because there were fewer pristine pieces to sell off, carve up, and pave. (Chapter 24)

"You can't talk to me like that! You just remember who's the star."
"And you just remember who writes all your lines, and who does all your dull, dull research. Remember who tells you what questions to ask, and who edits these pieces so you don't come off looking like a pompous airhead."
Except that's exactly how Reynaldo came off, most of the time. There was no way around it, no post-production wizardry that could disguise the man's true personality on tape. (Chapter 5)

It was then that he had gotten the idea to invite journalists, but not just any journalists: travel writers. Sparky Harper and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce adored travel writers because travel writers never wrote stories about street crime, water pollution, fish kills, beach erosion, refugees, AIDS epidemics, nuclear accidents, cocaine smugglers, gun-runners, or race riots. Once in a while, a daring travel writer would mention one of these subjects in passing, but strictly in the context of a minor setback from which South Florida was pluckily rebounding. (Chapter 26)

"But she's just a stripper."
Moldowsky grabbed Dilbeck's shirt. "Fanne Fox," he said, "was 'just a stripper.' Donna Rice was just a model-slash-actress. Elizabeth Ray was just a secretary who couldn't type. Gennifer Flowers was just a country singer. Don't you get it? Ask Chuck Robb. Or that horny idiot Hart. Teddy Kennedy for pity's sake. They'll all tell you the same: in politics, stealing is trouble, but pussy is lethal." (Chapter 23)

Charles Regis Perrone was a biologist by default. Medical school had been his first goal--specifically, a leisurely career in radiology. The promise of wealth had attracted him to health care, but as a devoted hypochondriac he was repelled by the notion of interacting with actual sick people. Perusing x-rays in the relatively hygienic seclusion of a laboratory had seemed an appealing option, one that would leave plenty of time for recreation." (Chapter 5)

"'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." (Epilogue)

Chaz shut the door and leaned wearily against it. Of the millions of people who weren't sure which direction the Gulf Stream ran, he was probably the only one to hold an advanced degree in a marine science. (Chapter 6)

"In my business, fear is a sane and very healthy emotion. That's because death and disaster aren't abstractions. They're as goddamn real as real can be." (Chapter 5)

The pilot episode of Bayou Brethren was a major disappointment, the visual appeal of high-def hog shit having been seriously overestimated by a network vice president who was summarily promoted to a more harmless position. The new network vice president in charge of the project felt the brothers needed a more esoteric vocation, to distract from their unappealing personalities, a view shared by potential advertisers who'd screened the off-putting pilot. (Chapter 1)