Skinny Dip Quotes

“I married an asshole, she thought, knifing into the waves.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Love isn't about thinking. You should know that by now.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“We get along fine. In return for food and shelter, they give me unconditional indifference.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Earl, you can’t walk around with a lead slug up your bottom. It’s bound to affect your outlook.” Tool jerked his hand away. “I’ll get it took care of, I swear.” “It could well be the turning point in your life,” she said. “What they call an epiphany. Or at least a catharsis.” He assumed those to be the surgical terms for a bullet removal, and he promised Maureen he would schedule the operation as soon as he got a break in his bodyguarding schedule.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“[on the way to Flamingo midnight blackmail rendezvous] Only one road led there, a two-lane blacktop that sliced through thirty-eight miles of unbroken scrub, cypress heads and saw-grass prairies. Although they were speeding through absolute darkness, Joey sensed a pulse of unseen life all around them...By now it was ten o'clock and most of the campers, besieged by insects, had retreated to their sleeping bags.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“What’s it called when you start hating yourself?” “A waste of energy.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Ricca, the witch, was alive. God only knew what Red Hammernut was up to. The blackmailer wanted the money tomorrow night. And topping it all was the videocassette that had been waiting on Charles Perrone’s doorstep when he returned home from church. The tape was grainy and underlit, but the images were sufficiently distinct that Chaz instantly realized what he was watching.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Hey, where’s your girlfriend? The one that was down at Flamingo?” “Oh, she’s home cleaning the machine guns.” Tool wasn’t sure if the guy was joking. Then, out of the blue, it hit him—that’s who the picture on the altar looked like: the blackmailer’s girlfriend.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“You’d be surprised,” he said. “Just the other night, some guy pushed his wife overboard.” The snip-snip-snip of the shears ceased.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Mick Stranahan’s sister was married to a lawyer named Kipper Garth, inept in all aspects of the profession except self-promotion.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“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.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“One spring evening in 1896, a prominent Pennsylvanian named Hamilton Disston blew his brains out in a bathtub. He had become gravely depressed after depleting his inheritance on a grandiose campaign to drain 4 million acres of Florida swamp known as the Everglades. Although Disston died believing himself a failure, he was later proven a pioneer and an inspiration. In the years that followed, one version or another of his rapacious fantasy was pursued by legions of avaricious speculators—land developers, bankers, railroad barons, real-estate promoters, citrus growers, cattle ranchers, sugar tycoons and, last but not least, the politicians they owned.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“The man called Tool lived in a trailer outside of LaBelle, not far from Lake Okeechobee. The trailer had come with a half-acre parcel upon which the previous owner had cultivated tomatoes, a crop despised by Tool since his days as a crew boss.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“he embarked upon an ambitious research project that ultimately connected him with a person named Samuel Johnson Hammernut, known as “Red” to both friends and enemies. Hammernut’s name had become familiar to Chaz through archived newspaper articles that alleged recurring atrocities against his fellowmen—specifically, immigrant farmworkers—as well as the planet itself.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Then one morning, while shredding newspapers for the rodent cages, he spotted a headline that would change his destiny: CONGRESS MULLS $8 BILLION PLAN FOR EVERGLADES RESTORATION.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“The detective had moved to Fort Lauderdale from St. Paul because his wife had inexplicably yearned to experience humidity. A decade later she was back in the Twin Cities and Rolvaag was still in Florida, divorced and sweating like a hog for eleven and a half months of the year.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Detective Karl Rolvaag belonged in the Midwest. This he knew in his heart, and he was reminded of it every day when he went to work.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Stranahan didn’t consider himself an eccentric or a hermit, even though at age fifty-three he lived alone on an island at the edge of the Atlantic with no landline, satellite dish or personal computer.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Stranahan hadn’t wanted to give up his job, but it had been discreetly explained that for political reasons the state attorney could not keep on staff an investigator (even a productive one) who had killed a duly elected judge (even a crooked one). So Stranahan had accepted the ludicrous buyout and purchased himself an old wooden stilt house in Biscayne Bay, where he had lived mostly unmolested for years until Hurricane Andrew smashed the place to splinters.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Chaz thought that he would eventually charm his new bride into sharing her vast inheritance. He had pictured the intimate ceremony taking place in the bedroom, of course, after a night of athletic lovemaking—Joey, still aglow, unfolding the pre-nup and holding it to the flame of a lilac-scented candle. It had never happened, though, and after nearly two years of waiting Chaz had given up hope. Joey wasn’t hoarding the family fortune so much as ignoring it, which Chaz regarded as a crime against nature. What was the point, he’d asked himself, of staying wed to a wealthy woman who refused to act like one? The answer: There was no point.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Her most distinct memories of their first twelve months of marriage were scenes of reliably torrid sex, which turned out to be Chaz’s singular shining talent. It was also his obsession. During their more revelatory second year together, Joey came to realize that she’d mistaken her husband’s indefatigable urge to rut for ardor, when, in truth, for him it was no more personal than isometrics. She also became acutely aware that Chaz did not regard matrimony as an exclusive carnal arrangement.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Chaz had proudly informed her that he was a biologist, and that he was attending a convention of distinguished scientists working to save the Everglades. He’d further confided that he was supposed to be taking a VIP safari tour of the Animal Kingdom but was instead sneaking out to play Bay Hill, the favorite hometown golf course of none other than Tiger Woods. Joey had been attracted to Chaz not only by his good looks, but by his involvement in such a lofty mission as rescuing Florida’s imperiled wilderness from greedy polluters. At the time he’d seemed like a fine catch, though in retrospect Joey realized that her judgment had been skewed by previous disappointments. Before meeting Chaz, she had been dumped in chilly succession by a tennis pro, a lifeguard and a defrocked pharmacist, a grim streak that destabilized her self-esteem as well as her standards.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“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.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“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.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“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 idea of interacting with actual sick people.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“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.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Damn if Oprah wasn't yakking with three movie actresses about what a hassle it was to be famous and have photographers snooping around, following you to the grocery and the ATM, whatever. Tool didn't feel one tiny bit sorry for her and them other gals, on account of they was rich enough to build twenty-foot walls around their mansions if they wanted. Butlers, bodyguards, the best of everything. Tool found himself thinking about Maureen, the old lady at Elysian Manor, alone and dying of God knows what kind of rotten cancer. Damn nurses won't even let her out of the sack to take a shower or go to the can. There's somebody would trade places with them actresses in a heartbeat, Tool thought, Maureen would. She'd be smilin' and wavin' at them photographers, she'd be so grateful not to be sick.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“I thought this was supposed to be a class neighborhood, what they call upscale. Hell, I live in a trailer park, and I wouldn't let my dogs take a leak on somebody's personal vee-hicle.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Wouldn't it be a treat, Chaz thought, to have just one goddamn day when nobody fucked with my head?”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip

“Stranahan told her not to mistake arrogance for pride. "A guy like Chaz can revive his ego with the palm of his hand.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Skinny Dip