Tim Dorsey Quotes

Don't you understand? The answer is inside each of you! Don't follow anyone else! Be your own leader! Lead yourselves!

Nothing builds confidence like live ammo.

It's the big new bridge," said Serge. "Takes you right across Lake What-the-Fuck." "Is that another real name?" "No," said Serge. "That's what I call it. It's really named Lake Surprise. But surprise is usually something good that provides delight, like winning the lottery or reaching in the back of the fridge and finding an unexpected jar of olives. But this lake got its name because it pissed people off." "How'd it do that?" "Another funny story. When Henry Flagler started the Overseas Railroad down the Keys, he looked for the route with the most land, because bridges over water cost more. So he sent out surveyors, and they began laying tracks south from the mainland of Florida, across some little islands and an isthmus to Key Largo. And I can't believe they built that far before realizing that right in the middle of a big chunk of land was this giant lake, and now they have to build an extra bridge that wasn't in the budget.

Oh, I'm with the government all right," said Serge. "But when I say 'with,' I mean in the context of I'm in favor of it because otherwise there are no streets or postage stamps, and everyone wanders the woods carrying their own mail and looking at the sun to know when to eat until there's an eclipse and everyone's blind. That's why you should vote.

I'm a one-hundred-percent, made-in-Florida, dope-smugglin', time-sharin', spring-breakin', log-flumin', double-occupancy discount vacation. I'm a tall glass of orange juice and a day without sunshine. I'm the wind in your sails, the sun on your burn and the moon over Miami. I am the native.

Anger is sweeping the country! Tea bags from sea to shining sea! Voters everywhere exploding from frustration!" "Why?" "Because the facts don't support their beliefs.

The common good," said Serge. "It's not hip.

True story: Some homeowner's burning a yard pile just like this one. And he goes inside for lemonade and opens the cabinet under the sink to toss something in the trash, and this rat's down in the bottom, gnawing a chicken bone. The rat had been driving the guy crazy for months, living in the walls and scampering through the attic at night like it had combat boots. So the guy grabs a rolling pin and beats it to death. Then he takes it outside and throws it on the burning pile." "Good story," said Coleman. "What's the problem?" "The rat's not dead. The heat wakes him up. It jumps off the pile and makes a beeline for the house. Except now its fur's on fire. The homeowner tries to intercept, but it zips between his legs, runs back inside and gets in the walls. Ignited the insulation. Whole place burned down.

Impossible' isn't in my vocabulary, said Serge.

Mount Batten jumped up from his chair and ran yelling across the living room. He broke through the yellow crime scene tape across the front door like a finish line and kept on running. Sharon

We don't simply say something that's untrue. We make statements so insane that there's no possible intelligent response. Like arguing with some old fart in a rocking chair who claims we never landed on the moon. Any educated person can only laugh. Meanwhile, we've just won over all the non-moon-landing votes.

The television was on Florida Cable News. A gray-haired man behind the anchor desk reported near tragedy at a state motor vehicle office, where a man who had failed the eye exam pulled a gun and fired fifteen shots at the staff, hitting nobody.

Florida is a theme park," said Serge. "And the theme is weirdness.

Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work.

I go over my own escape routes all the time. To survive in this state, you have to think like the French Resistance.

I realize the congressman isn't in. I want you to deliver this message to him personally: Tell him to shut his goddamn mouth! ... I know we're working behind the scenes to protect the oil company from its victims. That's exactly why he needs to go mute. Those were the strict ground rules from the beginning of his term: no press conferences, no interviews except Fox, and sit like a silent lump in the committee ... Because he's fucking stupid! And I'm not going to let him throw this away! Do you have any idea how hard it was to get a moron like that elected?

South Tampa is the polyp of land that dangles into Tampa Bay like a uvula.

It's been nonstop hallucinations.

You open a door and find a midget, and there's no way you can be in a bad mood. It's just not possible.

Courage is the ability to suspend the imagination.

It's only socialism if the money goes down, not up.

Couldn't be scathed. He was the crack in the system

We're all damaged. It's a universal component of the human condition, like the stages of grief, deja vu, and expired coupons.

Almighty Father, please stop making jerks. Amen...Break!

Chasing is in police DNA memory, like Labradors running after sticks," said Serge. "They probably don't even know why they do it. They just put the lights on and go, and a while later the partner who isn't behind the wheel says, 'Why are we stopping?' 'Something inside just told me to because there's a really cool crash up ahead. It's weird; I can't explain it.

fusing themselves into a single new genre about partying all night with gangsta bitches screwing cowboys to the nasty beat that leads to Jesus.

He's coming off the bridge," said Serge. "The rocks will start soon." "Rocks?" "It's local tradition, and another reason I love the Keys." Serge stood and put on his sneakers. "It's our version of when those people went out to the overpasses and waved at O. J. Simpson during the slow-motion chase. Except in the Keys, when there's a high-speed pursuit on TV heading south, the locals line the road and wait for the car to come off the bridge to Key Largo. Last time was around Christmas." "You're right." Coleman pointed at the TV again. "They're lining the side of the road. They're throwing rocks." "And we're at Mile Marker 105, so that gives us about three minutes." Serge tightened the Velcro straps on his shoes. "Let's go throw rocks.

as any roulette player can tell you, past performance has no bearing on future random outcome. So

Something else that separates me from society: Super-Positive Perspective! Where normal people would whine about subpar accommodations, I choose to view it as upscale camping.

Your mom's not that bad," said Jim. "Are you trying to make me mad?" "Okay she is." "I knew it. You've never liked her." "What's the right answer?" "So you're just telling me what I want to hear?" Jim reached over and put a hand on his wifes. "I love you.

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.

Yes Serge has killed a lot of people , but let's not overlook all of his other accomplishments.

This is trash state U.S.A.

Life was invented for kids. But then we all grow up, and society imposes filters that block the joy of silliness and sponging up pointless little things that make childhood the magic time for which it is widely known.

The Roman Empire invented snacks, right after the aqueducts. Irrigation flowed, food plentiful, people munching between meals in the city-states. They ate these little, sun-dried meaty things, highly distasteful and falling out of favor until olive oil. I just made all that up. The key to life is making shit up. Everyone does it or society would unravel, like, Gee, your hair looks great! Or: God told me you're wrong

The way I figured, I was just a kid, and if I could take it apart, they surely could put it back together. Then my mom would walk in the kitchen and see me standing on a chair at the counter, holding a screwdriver with disassembled components all over the place. 'What the heck's going on?' 'I'm intrigued how the blender works.

Those are the Big Three: clipboards, orange cones, elf suits. People don't question

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)

Murder is such a charged word. You know how some people fixate and won't let things go? They're called cops.

At work, he pretended every woman customer was a floozy with a hard-luck story who only needed a good slapping.

What do they mean 'serial killers'! said Serge. (person 1), okay. But (person 2) was self-defence and the (person 3)-I mean, that was the World Series! You can call me a murderer, fair is fair, but as soon as you put 'serial' in front of it, everyone automatically thinks your crazy.

Yes, give us books about the psychotic behavior and peripheral weirdness we see all around every day
and we will laugh in its face.
We are a proud people.
We are Floridians.

Another tip to weld society together. Give the person up to bat at the ATM plenty of space so they're not nervous about you peeking at their PIN number or slipping a blade between their ribs the second the money spits out.

Things sure have changed. FDR tried to calm us: "Nothing to fear but fear itself." Now politicians encourage the jitters. Panic is the new patriotism. "Today's Threat Level: Duck!

Serge's attention-deficit disorder was the first of many hyphens. Obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, anal-retentive, paranoid-schizophrenic. He was believed to be the only self-inflicted case of shaken-baby syndrome.

Son of a bitch!" "What is it?" asked Coleman. "Our flight's delayed!" "But only fifteen minutes," said Coleman. "I've seen this movie before. 'Fifteen minutes' is code for 'at least three to five hours.' They know the plane's stuck in Pittsburgh, where they wrestled another drunk pilot to the runway, but they don't want an open passenger revolt, so they incrementally string us along fifteen minutes at a time, until you're across the international date line." Serge paced in front of the departure screen. Fifteen minutes later, Serge grabbed Coleman and pointed. "Sweet Jesus! They just added another fifteen minutes!

They headed north, their taxi joining a sea of yellow cabs weaving up the Avenue of the Americas. The Russians saw there were lanes painted in the road, but that was clearly part of an ancient custom from some long-forgotten people.

Two preppies from the University of South Florida tried to hit on her with cocaine jokes. Sharon

I smell panic," said Serge. "These are different animals now. They're starting to winnow out the weak at the fringe of the herd. We need to hurry or this could affect our snack situation.

First, they set the hook with mind-bending kinky shit. Then a year later you're living in a Talking Heads song, dressed like Teddy Ruxpin, living with a strange woman in a big house full of frilly throw pillows, experiencing the frequency of sex that can only be charted by Halley's Comet. and you're wondering: How did I get here?

For long rides, I require a stimulating conversation partner with deep reservoirs of cultural references upon which my metaphors can find purchase ... .

Worry is usually interest paid on a debt that never comes due.

Relieve stress through hysterical screaming.

Nature's what it's all about, but our people have been brainwashed into thinking that life is a cell phone against your head and the TV on a beer commercial with hot chicks.

Back at the Rash [a Florida nightclub], a waif in a lime latex body tube went into the rest room to snort the newest designer drug, XGB5, which gave people the uncanny sensation of throwing money away while chewing their own lips off. It was hard to come by and everyone had to have it.

Orlando. Tourism on steroids. Florida's mutant chromosome with mouse ears. One of the newer attractions is an air-conditioned dome over a sprawling, man-made replica of the state's natural landscape. They bulldozed nature to build it.

Don't make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must

Hang on to your dreams with everything you got. Because the best life is when your dreams come true. The second-best is when they don't but you never stop chasing them.

Our political process appears to be a toxic dance of mutually assured destruction that takes all the citizens down with you, and that can't be right. So I've prepared a little experiment.

Make no mistake: I'm all about guns! I just love the legal incongruities our national discourse has spawned, like I can buy a shotgun any time of day without a serious background check, but if I need something for my sniffles, it's six forms of ID and complete school transcripts. The government has essentially created a system where if I want to clear a head cold, the easiest cure is to blow my brains out.

Like no other place on earth. Raw natural beauty, relentless freedom, unorthodox natives. A friend told me something else about the Keys I never forgot: Down here, nobody is who they seem to be. When people in other parts of the country want to reinvent themselves, they come to Florida. But when people in Florida want to reinvent themselves, they come to the Keys.

What's this whole Parrot Head phenomenon about, anyway?" asked Crease. "It's kind of like AA in reverse.

Do you think heaven's like that?
Could be worse, said Serge. You know all those pushy people who keep telling us we're not going to heaven? It could be full of them instead.

I love conversations!" "Why?" "Because we're all crazy!" said Serge. "And that's how society makes progress: imaginations getting together and glancing off each other in accidental tangents of invention.

my life's motto: If you're not willing to invent cool-sounding bullshit about yourself, don't expect others to.

Here's the plan: We do everything, all the traditions, and we do it grander than anyone ever dreamed! Here are the houselights, which will require extra generators so we don't smash the power grid, the holiday music CDs that will need waterproof outdoor concert speakers, the train set with extra boxes of tracks to connect all the rooms of the house, the toys where we forget the batteries, several gingerbread house kits we'll combine to form a mansion, DVDs of all the classic Christmas specials to run nonstop, mistletoe for all the doorways, the manger scene with a little Jesus that glows in the dark to emphasize the Holy Spirit third of the Trinity because he's the shy one who gets the least press, and all the presents we'll wrap together and give each other as Secret Santas.

Technology has just passed our survival instinct, and the country is spinning on a stationary existential axis of make-believe importance: We text about a Tweet of a YouTube video posted on Facebook with a clip of Glee about not texting that we just texted about. Instead of actual life, we're now living an air-guitar version of life.

Tampa's Latin quarter, Ybor City. Ybor had been the Cuban-Italian core when Tampa was Cigar City USA.

State Road 60 is one of those great old Florida drives. From Tampa on the west coast to Vero Beach on the east, rolling through Mulberry and Bartow and Yeehaw Junction. Phosphate mines and orange groves and cows loitering near water holes in vast open flats dotted with sabal palms, stretching for miles, making the sky big. Here and there were the kind of occasional, isolated farmhouses that made people subconsciously think: Do they get Internet? In the middle of one overgrown field stood a single concrete wall, several stories high, covered with grime and mildew, the ancient ruins of a drive-in theater. The top of the wall was the last thing to catch a warm glow from the setting sun.

WITH THREE WEEKS to go in the Florida governor's race, the Tallahassee morning newspaper ran the following headline: 2 HEADS EXPLODE IN SEPARATE INCIDENTS

She knew my buttons and kept pressing them like an epileptic in an arcade. If it's any consolation, I gave her fair warning." "Oh, my God!