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Laura van den Berg Quotes

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Famous Laura van den Berg Quotes

“My husband is nervous about a lot of things down here, like the monstrous size of the fire ants and the quality of the gasoline, because half the time the gas stations are out, the nozzles bundled up in black garbage bags, or the credit card readers don't work or the attendant is a shirtless man with a hip flask tucked into the waistband of his shorts. I keep trying to explain that this is a place with its own laws.”

AnxietyFloridaAntsStrangenessNervousnessSpousesGas StationsHusbandsFire Ants
Book:State of Paradise
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“In Florida I count cats. I first started counting the cats--a mix of strays and outdoor pets with collars and bells--while walking the dog and soon realized that we are hopelessly surrounded. Cats lounge on driveways and front lawns, crouch like gargoyles on porch railings and fence post, lurk in the bushes and under cars and behind trees, peer out from underneath crawl spaces. The derelict houses in the neighborhood appear to have been overtaken by cats--they crowd the decaying front porches, use the walls as scratching posts--and nearly all the non-derelict houses have what my husband and I refer to as a "stoop cat.”

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Book:State of Paradise
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“I've started taking photos of the cats with my phone, which they do not appreciate. When the camera appears they look away, flick their tails, spring up and shoot underneath a house, dive into some brush. Save for this one cat that stared right into the camera, orange and royal as a lion. A few nights later, on an evening walk with my dog, we pass ten cats, all stretched out in the scorched crabgrass behind a neighbor's back door. They watch us as we pass, their furred heads turning slowly at the same time. They look like they are casually dreaming of murder. Like they are guarding a portal to the underworld. Like they have been alive since the dawn of earth.”

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Book:State of Paradise
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“I was raised in the desert and always appreciated the way its landscape gives you a chance to see what's coming. In Florida, dangers don't reveal themselves until it's too late. The alligator lurking in the shallow pond, ready to devour your pet or your child. The snake hidden in the underbrush. The riptide slicing across that postcard-perfect Atlantic. Sinkholes. Encephalitis. Brain-destroying bacteria that flourish in overheated lakes. Quicksand.”

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Book:I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories
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“A place outside time. This is the phrase I overhear my husband using as he tries to describe Florida to his father over the phone. His father lives in a high-rise condo in New Jersey, and he is concerned that we are still down here. On the news, there is constant talk about Florida’s post-pandemic spiral. Speculation about whether the state is experiencing an ecological and spiritual succession. There is talk about militias creeping out of the swamp. There is talk of vandals. There is talk of literal highway robbery. (Our Cro-Magnon governor denies any of this is happening, even though there are reports that some of these forces are amassing in his name.) For the time being, I can ghostwrite my books and shop specials at the grocery and take my niece to the water park, but no one knows how much longer this version of our world will last. “Sometimes I can’t believe a place like this exists,” my husband says as we speed down a gleaming white limestone road that cuts through a palm forest, or ride an airboat around a swollen lake. Florida has a past, as all places do, but these days everyone is uncertain about its future.”

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Book:State of Paradise
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