Florida Quotes

“Almost everything strange washes up near Miami. ”
― Rick Riordan

“But you have to understand, mental illness is like cholesterol. There is is good kind and the bad. Without the good kind- less flavor to life. Van Gogh, Beethoven, Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, Pink Floyd (the early Piper at the Gates of Dawn line up), scientific breakthroughs, spiritual revolution, utopian visions, zany nationalism that kills millions- wait, that’s the bad kind. Tim Dorsey (Hurricane Punch)”
― Tim Dorsey, Hurricane Punch

“A prosthetic leg with a Willie Nelson bumper sticker washed ashore on the beach, which meant it was Florida.


Then it got weird.”
― Tim Dorsey, Pineapple Grenade

“There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast.
"The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways.
"Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller.
"I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state.
"You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.”
― Tim Dorsey, Florida Roadkill

“I emerged into the sticky-hot evening to find Ricky smoking on the hood of his battered car. Something about his mud-encrusted boots and the way he let smoke curl from his lips and how the sinking sun lit his green hair reminded me of a punk, redneck James Dean. He was all of those things, a bizarre cross-pollination of subcultures possible only in South Florida.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“I had a werewolf morning. Awoke with a rum hangover, imagined blood on the walls, and prayed to god it was mine.”
― Randy Wayne White, Ten Thousand Islands

“But Erin let it slide. The child was only four years old; she had a whole lifetime to learn about sadness. Today was for Dalmatians, ice cream and new dolls.”
― Carl Hiaasen, Strip Tease

“The general intellectual level of South Florida is somewhere just above "functionally retarded".”
― Tucker Max

“The tree feels splintery, nasty to my touch; it feels Floridian, more reptile than vegetable, more stucco than stone. I do loathe this state, their Elba.”
― Allan Gurganus, Plays Well with Others

“The fireworks went on for nearly half an hour, great pulsing strobes, fiery dandelions and starbursts of light brightening both sky and water. It was hard to tell which was reality and which was reflection, as if there were two displays, above and below, going on simultaneously—one in space-time, mused Max, and the other in time-space.”
― Sol Luckman, Snooze: A Story of Awakening

“The railing of the balcony was cold but the blue-black night air was so warm in October, in Florida, it felt as if it could hold you, all that wetness like a blanket of kisses.”
― Heather Sellers

“An ax came through the door. Then two firefighters. They looked down at and assistant mall manager crying and wearing a melted toupee, sitting cross-legged next to a mall cop with a bleeding ankle and a mouth full of paper.

One of the firefighters look at the other. "Not again.”
― Tim Dorsey, When Elves Attack: A Joyous Christmas Greeting from the Criminal Nutbars of the Sunshine State

“You should not be living in places that require you to evacuate when a storm comes through.”
― Steven Magee

“My mother has taken an interest in utopian texts, now that Florida seems to be heading in the opposite direction, though every time she describes one of these alleged paradises they sound a little terrifying. Too much manual labor and religious fervor. In the end, my mother often seems disappointed by these utopias too; she is still searching for her true north.”
― Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise

“A place outside time. This is the phrase I overhear my husband using as he tries to describe Florida to his father over the phone. His father lives in a high-rise condo in New Jersey, and he is concerned that we are still down here. On the news, there is constant talk about Florida’s post-pandemic spiral. Speculation about whether the state is experiencing an ecological and spiritual succession. There is talk about militias creeping out of the swamp. There is talk of vandals. There is talk of literal highway robbery. (Our Cro-Magnon governor denies any of this is happening, even though there are reports that some of these forces are amassing in his name.) For the time being, I can ghostwrite my books and shop specials at the grocery and take my niece to the water park, but no one knows how much longer this version of our world will last. “Sometimes I can’t believe a place like this exists,” my husband says as we speed down a gleaming white limestone road that cuts through a palm forest, or ride an airboat around a swollen lake. Florida has a past, as all places do, but these days everyone is uncertain about its future.”
― Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise

“In Florida I count cats. I first started counting the cats--a mix of strays and outdoor pets with collars and bells--while walking the dog and soon realized that we are hopelessly surrounded. Cats lounge on driveways and front lawns, crouch like gargoyles on porch railings and fence post, lurk in the bushes and under cars and behind trees, peer out from underneath crawl spaces. The derelict houses in the neighborhood appear to have been overtaken by cats--they crowd the decaying front porches, use the walls as scratching posts--and nearly all the non-derelict houses have what my husband and I refer to as a "stoop cat.”
― Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise

“My husband is nervous about a lot of things down here, like the monstrous size of the fire ants and the quality of the gasoline, because half the time the gas stations are out, the nozzles bundled up in black garbage bags, or the credit card readers don't work or the attendant is a shirtless man with a hip flask tucked into the waistband of his shorts. I keep trying to explain that this is a place with its own laws.”
― Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise

“My husband says he feels like he's an extra in Jurassic Park except someone has turned all the dinosaurs miniature. In Florida, nature is seductive and full of vengeance. To live here is to engage in a ceaseless battle to keep the outdoors from coming in, but in this instance there is absolutely nothing to do but admit defeat: there are hundreds of thousands of lizards out there, with bodies malleable enough to slip through the smallest crack. This is why it's important to know how to catch lizards in mason jars, so we can help them rejoin the countless hordes outside. My mother's backyard is so full of lizards that the grass undulates of its own accord.”
― Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise

“How did we wind up here, shipwrecked at my mother's house? In Florida, this is a question I ask myself every day.”
― Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise

“Our father had a gift for convincing people to follow him into the wilderness, a quality that made him both dangerous and magical. He spent the whole of his adult life in Florida and that is how I have come to think of this place too, as equal parts danger and magic.”
― Laura van den Berg, State of Paradise

“Our rural Florida well water had no fluoride. So the
state let kids sign up for a monthly treatment. Handed
us a small paper cup in the library. It made your
mouth tingle. We called it "The Swish." Few used this
program. It's not hard to see why. A teacher once told
our class I was going "to drink poison." This scared
everyone. But I never died.”
― Damon Thomas, Some Books Are Not For Sale

“I got presents as a kid. That stopped in my teens. The
small family gifts were gone. Replaced by dark humor
– "I got you the same thing as last year. But purple.”
― Damon Thomas, Southern Gothic Children's Book: A Rural Gloom Graphic Novel

“A newly single friend discovered the Internet. Spent
much of the 90s planning double dates. I was a
regular plus-one. He would have a different date each
night. Mine was always the same. A friend that lived
on the way to town. We wouldn't call ahead. Just head
over to her place. She'd put on glitter lip gloss and be
ready to go. We went on over 20 dates this way. Nights
in the backseat sharing Taco Bell. Years pass. She has
a question – "With all those dates... were we... dating?"
We decide that we probably were. This is just how
things work at times. You live your life. Then
understand it later.”
― Damon Thomas, Some Books Are Not For Sale

“A rich man dug up a paupers' grave. Down on the
Dixie coast. Bodies found washed up on the shore
were moved inland. And the rich got richer. People
talked haunting. They spoke of ghosts. But that man
lived a long life. Dedicated to the pursuit of material
gain. Then died himself. There was no Divine
retribution. No supernatural justice. Just a lot of
people speaking ill of the dead.”
― Damon Thomas, Some Books Are Not For Sale

“They say there is a Cross City Elite. Growing up some
acted like this was true. Giving preference to certain
last names. Ignoring the rest of the county. Their kids
were told they were "born better." Then headed off to
school to let us know. Generational wealth got us
bullied. By the best a small town had to offer.”
― Damon Thomas, Some Books Are Not For Sale

“I share stories in many ways. Spoken Word albums.
Print books. Live readings. Comics with Nick. Each has
its fans. Each is someone's favorite. They say — "The
medium is the message." And that might be true. But
people like good stories. No matter how they are told.”
― Damon Thomas, Some Books Are Not For Sale

“Aren't any Floridians besides Bonnie Stark even curious why, once a decade, an anti-queer or anti-Black movement will sprout from their soil, flourish, and spread its seeds across America in a panic that inevitably claims that tough actions will save innocent whites from a moral hellscape? Why, to privilege a sunshine dream, are generation after generation of Florida strongmen allowed to escape culpability? How could one peninsula be such a pressure point for the American body politic, such a wavemaker for the nerves?”
― Robert W. Fieseler, American Scare: Florida's Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives

“He leaned in, voice lower, serious now, or at least less gooberstòœfff. “The monks, Chase and Christina, though some sources say their names were actually Chasse and Kristynia, lived in a Floridian monastery, a colonial outpost where humidity and heresy mingled freely. Right here, in what’s now called Pinellas County. Just a few blocks from where we now sit and leak.”
― Chase Griffin

“Sorry about falling asleep again. I understand that having your main character fall asleep every page break is a big no-no in the world of fiction, but oh well. I’m also not allowed to look in a mirror. And I’m not allowed to digress. But here we are. I like books that pass out, peer into forbidden mirrors, and have jeremiads. And I bet if you’re an Atleby fan, you’re into dreams, mirrors, and asides too.”
― Chase Griffin

“I'm not sure what cyberpunk catechism means. It's making me think of the late-cap mediums being embedded with hermeneutics-of-suspicion trigger mechanisms. Is that what she means? Is she randomly talking about how the late-cap mediums made one want to search until they confirmed some sort of bias. Do you catch my westerlies? I don't know if I am expressing this very well. I mean that the mediums no longer informed or entertained like the mediums of yore. The mediums of late-cap only appeared to inform or entertain. Underneath the surface, one found that the mediums were built to make one say, “Aha! So that is what other people are like!”
― Chase Griffin