Sunset Bluff Quotes

“Maybe it was just Bert’s deep familiarity with the place that made it precious; maybe familiarity alone”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“And he would have been hanging out with Darla every day. Of course, he hadn’t yet known Darla existed. Then again, no one ever said that human regrets were limited to the rational.”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“oblivion; people who had no idea what they were seeking, determined only that it be as different as possible from what they were used to…”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“Tourists and transients came and went, providing a sort of bite-size sample of what was already a miniature town at the dangling tail-end of a continent. There were young and old, black and white and brown and yellow, straight and queer and indeterminate, people on the lam and people on the make; people looking for a second chance, or a third, or fourth; people seeking ecstasy or”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“be accepted hairy warts and wattled chins and all? Or was it just a way of saving on laundry detergent? Who could say with human beings? And, in Key West at least, who cared?”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“Over time, Richie had noticed that it was almost always the people you really didn’t want to look at who just couldn’t wait to strip in public. Men or women, it really didn’t seem to matter. The less photogenic the body, the more of it was bared to the sunshine, the salt-and-chlorine breezes, the neighbors’ captive eyeballs. Why? Was it purely about freedom and courage and lack of inhibition? Was it a passive sort of in-your-face aggression, a demand to”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“upside-down to get a spark just before they were runnin’ outta gas and sometimes it would burn your fingers…But wait, where were we goin’ wit’ this?”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“so I tip my cap that you broke through to find that little spark a decency that dwells in all of us, or at least we like to think it does, or at least it does inna movies, but then again, the question is, was it really worth diggin’ through all the brutality and bullshit to find that little spark, dim and flickerin’ though it may be, sometimes almost, whaddyacallit, extinguished altogether, like the way ya used to have to turn the old Zippo lighters”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“The bottomless toy box of jigsaw clouds, the tireless play of light on water, the sighing mix of relief and melancholy when the glare stopped challenging your eyes and dusk came creeping in.”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“maybe familiarity alone, with places as with people, bestowed a gloss that otherwise wouldn’t shine as bright.”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff

“mingled whiffs of salt and iodine and seaweed funk and coconut sunblock wafting from the water side, while from behind, where food trucks lined the promenade, came boardwalk smells of burgers on the grill and potatoes in the fryer and pizzas sprinkled with oregano browning in the oven; childhood smells that whisked together the present and the past and linked each fragrant sunset to the thousands of others that had gone before. Always the same and never the same.”
― Laurence Shames, Sunset Bluff