The dog proved to be as dumb and stubborn as a mud fence, so Stranahan had named him Strom. (Chapter 2) - Carl Hiaasen

Chub's real name was Onus Dean Gillespie. The youngest of seven children, he was born to Moira Gillespie when she was forty-seven, her maternal stirrings long dormant. Onus's father, Greve, was a blunt-spoken man who regularly reminded the boy that the arc of his life had begun with a faulty diaphragm, and that his appearance in Mrs. Gillespie's womb had been as welcome as "a cockroach on a wedding cake." Still, Onus was neither beaten nor deprived as a child. Greve Gillespie made good money as a timber man in northern Georgia and was generous with his family. They lived in a large house with a basketball hoop in the driveway, a second-hand ski boat in the garage, and a deluxe set of World Book encyclopedias in the basement. All of Onus's siblings made it to Georgia State University, and Onus himself could have gone there too, had he not by age fifteen chosen a life of sloth, inebriation and illiteracy. (Chapter 7)

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.

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)