Swamplandia! Quotes
"The stadium that housed the Gator Pit seated 265 tourists."
"The tourists moved sproingily from buttock to buttock in the stands."
"A small spoil island rose out of the center of the Pit."
"Our mother swam blissfully on, brushing at the spotlight’s perimeter as if she were testing the gate of a floating corral."
"The lake was planked with great gray and black bodies."
"Her arms rowed hard; you could hear her breaststrokes ripping at the water."
"We had one mammal, Judy Garland, a small, balding Florida brown bear."
"She could do a trick, sort of: the Chief had trained her to nod along to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow.""
"Swamplandia! had been under siege from several enemy forces, natural and corporate, for most of my short lifetime."
"The Beginning of the End can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it."
"I was thirteen years old when the end of Swamplandia! began in earnest."
"One tragedy can beget another, and another—bright-eyed disasters flooding out of a death hole like bats out of a cave."
"Incredibly, Mom stayed dead but the sky changed."
"Love can warp a hierarchy; the whole pyramid got flipped on its head."
"To even think 'the red Seth' was like staring into a radiance I’d swallowed, a sun."
"The secret would go dark again. Right away he would forget her."
"The bitten guy turned out to be a soupy-eyed lawyer from Arkansas."
"Easter eggs in these adult cribs, Easter eggs on toilets with guardrails."
"These your grandkids! No! You produced these beauties, Mr. Bigtree?"
"It was like he’d caught Grandpa Sawtooth’s sickness—those two kept staring at each other as if they’d never before met."
"The Chief held the black bag on his lap. As soon as we left the harbor, he lifted the Seth of Seths out of the Hefty bag, cradling the skull with an air of sorrowful apology."
"We could find a decent place on the Atlantic side of the city, I bet."
"I thought you hated that thing," Kiwi mumbled. "I do!" I said angrily. "That’s not the point, though …"
"You don’t want to turn seventeen on this island, Ava, believe me."
"I would vanish on the mainland, dry up in that crush of cars and strangers."
"Kiwi resisted the urge to document this baffling progression on his notepad—his note-taking seemed to make his fellow workers uncomfortable."
"His whole body ached at the terrible gulf between what he knew himself to be capable of and what he was actually doing."
"The World of Darkness got shortened to 'the World'—as in: 'Hey, Kiwi, hook me up! Clock me out of the World, yeah?'"
"Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation."
"All objects and events on our island, every single thing that you could see with your eyes, were like clues that I could use to reinvent her."
"For a second I luxuriated in a real hatred of my brother."
"It was 80 degrees in our room. I tugged at my hair with both hands and watched her performing hygiene in the mirror."
"Watching people board the ride and get released down the chute was like watching an eerie factory assembly line."
"Real whales, Kiwi had to believe, were less orderly but more expedient about their consumption of plankton."
"Kiwi undid a triple knot on his shoelace that had been bugging him for weeks, which felt as satisfying as solving a crime."
"You couldn’t have a baby growing inside you, either—not if you wanted to plunge headlong into the Jacuzzi steams of the Leviathan!"
"This office had a marmalade-tinted window that opened onto a dark, box-strewn artery of the World."
"Kiwi wondered how the payroll guy could stand to exist here. You could go a full day inside this part of the Leviathan without seeing the sun."
"His life had begun less than a year ago. 'I’m next.'"
"The dredge clanked downstream with the dipper handle swinging."
"Happiness could be felt as a pressure, too, more hard-edged and solid than longing, even."
"The buzzards were returning. People began screaming, babbling obscurely; someone went splashing overboard."
"Nobody can get to hell without assistance, kid."
"That's my home," Kiwi mumbled. "That's where I grew up."
"You mean polar bears," Kiwi corrected automatically.
"You didn’t get the memos? Look around your locker," Vijay told him.
"Right-o? Are you Sherlock Holmes? Have I taught you nothing?"
"Somewhere our Seths are clawing onto their rocks," he thought, staring out across lanes of Loomis traffic.
"Deep breaths, kid. Sit down. Nobody’s dying here."
"What a question. Do I promise that hell is a real place?"
"Are you crazy?" Carl said when he’d finished.
"That’s okay. It’s not so funny when it happens to her."
"If you’re dead set on bringing it, which is a pretty stupid move—but I noticed that you didn’t ask my opinion."
"I can’t tell the future. But if they do find her, well... I might worry about that, too."
"Smile!" The itinerant photographer wandered through the Lake of Fire and snapped candid pictures of the Lost Souls.
"I ass-pire to fuck a bitch with great ass cheeks!" The kid behind him giggled.
"Hate like that was an easy, monochrome feeling."
"The rapid cooling of a body in the absence of all tourists."
"Convection caused your thoughts to develop an alarming blue tinge."
"I've been wearing it for so long that I feel naked without it."
"Once I could use their calls to get them out of trees, I started to tour the swamp."
"I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that I am not a literal angel, no."
"You're on the edge of the universe, kid, and you don't even know it."
"The wind tilled the saw grass for miles and miles in every useless direction."
"The edge of the universe, I repeated, and picked up the dripping handle of my oars."
"The humps of broken shells rose around us like defunct treasure."
"The freak show happens inside the circus tent, kid; we're just at the entrance to the fairgrounds."
"Instinct drove him forward like a nail and he kept squeezing."
"You are squeezing too hard. You might actually kill him."
"The voice didn’t have the shrillness of a conscience; it was bored and old, content to let Death happen."
"What? Criminal charges? No, I don’t think that’s necessary, okay? I just want to go. I’m really sorry …"
"You got off extremely lucky. He’s an old man."
"You got off lucky this time, but I wouldn’t bet on it again."
"If I don’t find water, freshwater, rainwater, potable water, and soon ..."
"The Chief’s good publicity funneled into the blue sky inside Kiwi, scattering birds."
"I heard the blare of the Chief’s banter through the Pit’s loudspeakers."
"You need to have something in your stomach, bro."
"If you love rods, son, you go right ahead. That’s your lifestyle choice ..."
"But my brother and my sister and I rarely talk about it anymore."