Camino Island Quotes

I’ve never understood people who grind through a book they don’t really like, determined to finish it for some unknown reason.

Do you read them? Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald?" "Only if I have to. I try to avoid old dead white men.

Plans—nothing ever goes as planned, and the survivors are the ones who can adapt on the fly.

If you’re gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.

her mind was wonderfully uncluttered with the nagging irritations of everyday life.

You’re thinking somebody came over here, in the middle of a Category 4 hurricane, caught Nelson in the den, whacked him in the head, dragged his body outside, tried to clean up the blood, and then ran off? Seriously?

Maybe you should be a lawyer.” “I can’t think of anything worse.

She was a good swimmer but we never used life jackets.” “It wouldn’t matter in that storm.

banks and student loan companies had convinced Congress that such debts should be given special protection and not exempted. She remembered him saying, “Hell, even gamblers can go bankrupt and walk away.

Too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash.

I doubt it. I’ll give any book a hundred pages, and if by then the writer can’t hold my attention I’ll put it away. There are too many good books I want to read to waste time with a bad one.” ​

And you’ve never been married, right?” “Correct.” “Well, I’ve tried it twice and I’m not sure I can recommend it.

Too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash.’ That’s the perfect description of Tessa’s family.

Reed will pull a Trump, file for bankruptcy and hide behind the courts for protection

Remember Drunk in Philly? J. P. Walthall’s masterpiece.

Bruce said, “Well, dear, you’re not sticking me in one of those places. I’ve always said that when it’s time for the diapers it’s time for the black pill.” “Let’s talk about something else,” Mercer said.

Writers are generally split into two camps: those who carefully outline their stories and know the ending before they begin, and those who refuse to do so upon the theory that once a character is created he or she will do something interesting.

El adolescente padecía como nunca, en aquel momento, la sensación de encierro que produce vivir en una isla; estar en una tierra sin caminos a otras tierras a donde se pudiera llegar rodando, cabalgando, caminando, pasando fronteras, durmiendo en albergues de un día, en un vagar sin más norte que el antojo, la fascinación ejercida por una montaña pronto desdeñada por la visión de otra montaña(…)

The books were all first editions, some autographed by the authors. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, published in 1961; Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948); John Updike’s Rabbit, Run (1960); Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952); Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer (1961); Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus (1959); William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967); Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1929); Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965); and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951).

Once she was settled and rested, she would plunge into her work and average at least a thousand words a day.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler, one of my favorites, and LaRose by Louise Erdrich.

By 4:00 a.m., an electrical engineer had worked his way through the school’s computer grid and found the problem. Electricity

The fifth member of the team preferred to work at home. Ahmed was the hacker, the forger, the creator of all illusions, but he didn’t have the nerve to carry guns and such. He worked from his basement in Buffalo and had never been caught or arrested. He left no trails. His 5 percent would come off the top. The other four would take the rest in equal

I figured you were missing me.

In his thirty-four years at the same desk, Ed had processed all of them.

Drop her a note, make the introduction, tell her what you’re doing here, the usual routine.

now. The violence that had worked before might not work so well now. Back then, they needed only a couple of names. Now they wanted the goods. An assault on Cable or his wife or someone he cared for could easily trigger a reaction that could ruin everything. 4. Tuesday, July 5. The crowds were gone, the beaches empty again. The island woke up slowly, and under a glaring sun tried to shake off the hangover of a long holiday weekend. Mercer was on the narrow sofa, reading a book called The Paris Wife, when an e-mail beeped through.

took out a notepad, and seemed ready to pounce on everything laid on the table. Half an hour later,

Her current one, adjunct professor of freshman literature, would expire in two weeks, courtesy of budget cuts brought on by a state legislature dominated by those rabid about tax and spending cuts. She had lobbied hard for a new contract

Denny and Rooker were watching too. They had traced the North Carolina license plates on Mercer’s car and done the background. They knew her name, recent employment history, current lodging at the Lighthouse Inn, publishing résumé, and partial ownership of the beach

Sally herself: early forties, recovering alcoholic, divorced with no kids, quick and witty, savvy and tough, and, of course, quite attractive. She published once a year and toured extensively, always stopping at Bay Books and usually when Noelle was out of town.

He’s also known to deal in stolen books, one of the few in that rather dark business.

difference

The old saying from college: “If you’re gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.” ​

In her world survival was more important than honesty.

What is discovery?” she asked. “Both sides get to poke around in the other’s case. Live depositions, written interrogatories, document swaps, the like.

Some writers are seasoned raconteurs with an endless supply of stories and quips and one-liners. Others are reclusive and introverted souls who labor in their solitary worlds and struggle to mix and mingle.

The better part of the tour was the gossip offered up by the tour guide. It seems a certain Genoese sailor used to frequent a married woman here in Burgos. Being a highly skilled navigator, this seaman was particularly well-versed in seasonal rhythms. His mistress’ husband was in the shipping business, and gone six months a year, allowing the swashbuckling Genoan to swoop in to fill the seasonal vacuum. Like most Genoese, this sailor—Christopher Columbus—was attracted to the cosmopolitan flair that Burgos offered. The guide went on to point out that this same Captain Columbus would later delay his departure for the New World from the Galapagos Islands for over a month, when he fell into the arms of an especially delectable, but married, island woman. I guess I am just naïve. After all, how much of a surprise is it that the world’s greatest explorer of all time was also a bit peripatetic when it came to sleeping arrangements.

William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929); Steinbeck’s Cup of Gold (1929); F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920); and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929).

denied that President Jefferson had kept Ms. Hemings as his concubine, in spite of ample anecdotal evidence. DNA testing resolved the issue in 1998 when one of his descendants was genetically linked to one of hers.

One led him by the elbow while the other grabbed his bag from the overhead rack. Driving to the jail, they said nothing. Bored with silence, Mark asked, “So, fellas, am I under arrest?” Without turning around, the driver said, “We don’t normally put handcuffs on random civilians.

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From 1737 to 1771, Mr. Fancher’s three ships made 228 voyages across the Atlantic and delivered about 110,000 kidnapped slaves to American markets, primarily Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah. He was considered to be the largest American slave trader and became very rich.

Think of the litigation when this goes down. Tens of thousands of lawsuits against the company. Reed will pull a Trump, file for bankruptcy and hide behind the courts for protection.

Rosa

magistrate,

After the first dozen or so, Bruce began placing the books on a table rather than returning them to the shelves. His initial curiosity was overwhelmed by a heady wave of excitement, then greed. On the lower shelf he ran across books and authors he’d never heard of until he made an even more startling discovery. Hidden behind a thick three-volume biography of Churchill were four books: William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929); Steinbeck’s Cup of Gold (1929); F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920); and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929). All were first editions in excellent condition and signed by the authors.

It was just bad luck.

chairwoman

She awoke in a strange bed in a round room, and for the first few seconds she was afraid to move because any movement would sharpen the pounding in her forehead. Her eyes were burning so she closed them. Her mouth and throat were parched. A gentle rolling in her stomach warned that things might get worse. Okay, a hangover; been here before and survived, could be a long day but, hey, what the hell? No one made her drink too much. Own it, girl. The old saying from college: “If you’re gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.

Okay, I talked to my lieutenant and he said don’t touch the body. He’s trying to find our homicide guy.” “I didn’t know we had a homicide guy,” Bruce said. “I can’t remember the last murder on Camino Island.” Nat said, “It’s Hoppy Durden. He also does bank robberies.” “I can’t remember the last bank robbery.” “He’s not very busy.

Reed will pull a Trump,

But old playboys don’t exactly fade away. As a general rule, they go down swinging.

poisoning himself. With that project complete, they decided that the next priority was returning Nelson’s car. Bruce checked the doors and locked the house, set the alarm with his remote, and left in his Chevy Tahoe. Bob and Nick followed in Nelson’s BMW, and it took an hour to wind their way around the devastation. Not surprisingly, there was no one at the condo—no homicide team sifting for clues, no neighbors picking up debris. No one had touched the yellow crime scene tape. Bruce lifted it and Bob returned the BMW to its spot. The three met in the garage and stared at the golf clubs, but said nothing. They closed the overhead door, walked into the kitchen, and discussed Nelson’s keys. If they left them behind, there was the chance that someone

Good. There will be a box delivered to your cottage in the morning at ten. It’s a pile of books, all four of Noelle’s and the three by Serena.” “Homework?

It's far cheaper to pay bribes than to provide quality care.

John D. MacDonald is a favorite of mine, especially his Travis McGee series,

are generally split into two camps: those who carefully outline their stories and know the ending before they begin, and those who refuse to do so upon the theory that once a character is created he or she will do something interesting

Sorry to disturb, but Scott Turow is on the phone.

Two blocks away, Denny was in a hotel bar eating pizza when his cell phone rattled. It

I sold them to a dealer named Bruce Cable, owns a nice bookstore on Camino Island, Florida.

delivered the horrifying news:

So what are these?” she asked, waving a hand

Over its twenty-three-plus years, the bookstore had become the center of downtown Santa Rosa.

Thanks. So will you finish that?” “I doubt it. I’ll give any book a hundred pages, and if by then the writer can’t hold my attention I’ll put it away. There are too many good books I want to read to waste time with a bad one.” “Same here, but my limit is fifty pages. I’ve never understood people who grind through a book they don’t really like, determined to finish it for some unknown reason. Tessa was like that. She would toss a book after the first chapter, then pick it up and grumble and growl for four hundred pages until the bitter end. Never understood that.

She would never again subject herself to the embarrassment of sitting at a lonely table with a stack of pretty books and trying to avoid eye contact with customers trying not to get too close. She knew other writers, a few anyway, and she had heard the horror stories of showing up at a bookstore and being greeted by the friendly faces of the employees and volunteers, and wondering how many of them might actually be customers and book buyers, and watching them glance around nervously in search of potential fans, and then seeing them drift away forever when it became apparent that the beloved author was about to lay an egg.

So what’s it gonna be—literary fiction or popular fiction?” “Can’t it be both?” Bruce asked, thoroughly enjoying the conversation. “For a handful of authors, right,” Myra replied. “But for the vast majority the answer is no.” She looked at Mercer and said, “This is something we’ve been debating for about ten years, since the first day we met. But, anyway, let’s assume that you will probably not be able to write literary fiction that will slay the critics and also rack up impressive royalties

devices with the simple message of “Clear.” Delays were inexcusable and perhaps catastrophic. A delay meant the Sat-Trak, and especially its user, had been compromised in some manner. A delay of fifteen minutes activated Plan B, which called for Denny and Trey to grab the manuscripts and move to a second safe house. If either Denny or Trey failed to report, the entire operation, or what was left of it, was to be aborted. Jerry, Mark, and Ahmed were to leave the country immediately. Bad news was transmitted by the simple message “Red.” “Red” meant, with no questions asked and no time for delay, that (1) something has gone wrong, (2) if possible get the manuscripts to the third safe house, and (3) by all means get out of the country as quickly as possible. If anyone was nabbed by the cops, silence was expected. The five had memorized the names of family members and their addresses to ensure complete loyalty to the cause and to each other. Retaliation was guaranteed. No one would talk. Ever. As ominous as these preparations were, the mood was still light, even celebratory. They had pulled off a brilliant crime and made a perfect escape. Trey, the serial escapee, relished telling his stories. He was successful because he had a plan after each escape, whereas most guys spent their time thinking only of getting out. Same with a crime. You spend days and weeks planning and plotting, then

Of the five in their gang, there was no doubt in Denny’s mind that Trey was

Myra said, “Right, right. We had the best idea ever for a semi-serious novel, but we were not about to give it to our jackass publisher. We had to get out of his lousy contract so we could snag a better house, one that would appreciate the genius behind our great idea. That part of it worked. Two years later, the three awful books were still selling like crazy while the great novel flopped. Go figure.

First and most important is to decide whether you want to write literary fiction, stuff you can’t give away, hell, Bruce can’t even sell it, or do you want to write something more popular.

He ordered another glass of rosé, and the second one proved as ineffective as the first.

His wife and kids would stick by him, weather the embarrassment and move on. It was, after all, Texas, a land where pasts were easily forgotten if one picked up the pieces and made more money. There was also a certain admiration for outlaws.

A Spool of Blue Thread

Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler, one of my favorites, and LaRose by Louise Erdrich.

Jerry had in fact, and because of this experience he knew that his pal McGregor here had a copy of his rap sheet. “Yes,” he said. “How many times?” “Look, Mr. Agent. You just told me I have the right to remain silent. I ain’t saying a word and I want a lawyer right now. Got it?” McGregor said, “Sure,” and left the room. Around the corner, Mark was being situated in another room. McGregor walked in and went through the same ritual. They sipped coffee for a while and talked about the Miranda rights. With a warrant, they had searched Mark’s bag and found all sorts of interesting items. McGregor opened a large

You’ve heard the old saying ‘Too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash.

Just part of my job,” Bruce said with a smile. “Reading great books, drinking great wine.

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