Quotes & Sayings About Florida Keys

Inspired by John Muir's A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, John Davis walks, bikes, and kayaks on a 'voyage of recovery' from the Florida Keys to southeastern Canada. He bears witness not only to wilderness that still sustains bears, panthers, and bobcats but also to the possibilities for connecting further wildways in the eastern United States. His inspiring journey reminds us all that we must rediscover the wildness we still have before we lose it forever. — Michael Brune

I am an avid fisherman, and my daily schedule is to write in the morning and then go fishing in the afternoon. In Maine, I fish mostly for stripers, and in the Florida Keys, I go after all kinds of game fish. — Rodman Philbrick

I thought about how I had come to know him a little bit over the last few months and how he was now getting out, escaping from prison, just like he always said he would. I realized I wanted to escape as well. I wanted to leave this town and this lousy job, go home, collect my family, and drive away to Washington State, Colorado, the Florida Keys, or up to northern New England and find a new job where I wasn't exposed to the worst parts of the worst people every day. — Robert Reilly Jr.

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. — Tim Dorsey

I grew up down in Florida, and in the Keys, there's this place called Sea Camp which was not unlike Space Camp, except you explored the sea. And so that kind of whetted my appetite for that. But then I ended up swimming in a lagoon full of Cassiopeia jellyfish, and that quickly quashed that desire to be a marine biologist. — Joe Lo Truglio

The Young Wrecker on the Florida Reef, and Reap the Wild Wind, Oliver Griswold's The Florida Keys and the Coral Reef, and McGuane's Ninety-two in the Shade. — Tom Corcoran

I've won some awards. 'Time' magazine designated me as one of the environmental heroes of the 20th century. Oh, and I've got some honorary citizenships, like from the Conch Republic of the Florida Keys. But the one thing I am proud of is I didn't get the Chevron environmental award. Never did get that one. — Paul Watson

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. — Tim Dorsey

I remember visiting my grandmother Adele in Ponce Inlet, Florida, when I was three years old, and she had an IBM electric typewriter. I thought that this electric typewriter was about the most fascinating toy in the world - I liked the little bell and the sounds and the feel of the keys and especially the erase key. — Gabrielle Zevin

I call the age we are entering the creative age because the key factor propelling us forward is the rise of creativity as the primary mover of our economy. — Richard Florida

[Immigrants] who come from anywhere there is hunger, unemployment, oppression, and violence and who clandestinely cross the borders of countries that are prosperous, peaceful, and rich in opportunity, are certainly breaking the law, but they are exercising a natural and moral right which no legal norm or regulation should try to eliminate: the right to life, to survival, to escape the infernal existence they are condemned to by barbarous regimes entrenched on half the earth's surface. If ethical considerations had any pervasive effect at all, the women and men who brave the Straits of Gibraltar or the Florida Keys or the electric fences of Tijuana or the docks of Marseilles in search of work, freedom, and a future should be received with open arms. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

Natives of the Florida Keys often refer to themselves as Conchs, and for good reason: They have been drinking. — Dave Barry