17
" 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 (Skink, #5; Mick Stranahan #2)
20
" 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 (Skink, #5; Mick Stranahan #2)
