Californian Quotes & Sayings

If you were doing something in secret and didn't want the attention, what better way to have it ridiculed and dismissed than bring in a few Californian elements? — Thomas Pynchon

I'd trained to be a diplomat but the state department said I was too liberal. I saw an ad in the New York Times ... a hack Californian editor came to New York to butcher some films and he needed an assistant. For some reason I read it that day and it changed my life. I went to work for him and he was horrible, butchering these masterpieces by Antonioni, Visconti, but I learned enough to know what he was doing wrong. — Thelma Schoonmaker

Being born and raised as a Californian, I somewhat ignorantly had taken for granted the diversity and liberal mindset that shaped my childhood and adult life. — Carre Otis

The shelves were packed close together, and it felt like I was standing at the border of a forest
not a friendly Californian forest, either, but an old Transylvanian forest, a forest full of wolves and witches and dagger-wielding bandits all waiting just beyond moonlight's reach. — Robin Sloan

What troubled people especially was not just the tragedy--or even the needlessness--but the element of fate in it all. If the Titanic had heeded any of the six ice messages on Sunday . . . if ice conditions had been normal . . . if the night had been rough or moonlit . . . if she had seen the berg 15 second sooner--or 15 seconds later . . . if she had hit the ice any other way . . . if her watertight bulkheads had been one deck higher . . . if she had carried enough boats . . . if the Californian had only come. Had any one of these "ifs" turned out right, every life might have been save. But they all went against her--a classic Greek tragedy. — Walter Lord

I'm a third generation Californian, and there's a lot of talented, good-looking guys in California, so I'm just happy to be working and lucky to be working. — Scott Eastwood

Ultimately, of course, there is no excuse for being fat in this culture. It's the one last prejudice we allow ourselves, the final frontier of acceptable segregation. Our political correctness is positively Californian when it comes to race, creed, origin, and orientation. But we still condemn ourselves and others for this last intolerable offense in an annoyingly tolerant society. — Joni Rodgers

If you ask me what am I, I might say 'I am a Californian,' and if George Bush were here, he would say 'I am a Texan.' — George P. Shultz

I found while driving in Wyoming that wearing a stetson and driving a beat-up pickup meant you could go as fast as you like, while the police picked up Californian winnebagos that went one mph over 55. After all, they wanted to bring money into the state, not merely circulate it. — Terry Pratchett

The problem with being a second-generation Californian is you're not objective about California itself. I think a lot of people come here for the comfort of it, or to reinvent themselves, and maybe creative people are natural searchers, searching for someplace to be. The lifestyle becomes very appealing--Clint Eastwood — Barbara Isenberg

Hear about the Californian terrorist that tried to blow up a bus? Burned his lips on the exhaust pipe. He can take his'n and beat your'n, then he can take your'n and beat his'n. — Bum Phillips

I am a Californian, and we have twice the individuality and originality of any people in the United States. We always get quite huffy when we are spoken of as merely Americans. — Gertrude Atherton

I'm a proud American - becoming a citizen in 1988 was one of the most profoundly moving occasions in my life; I'm a former Texan and a recent Californian. — Abraham Verghese

You don't need it, but will you take some advice from a Californian who's been around for a while? Cherish these rivers. Witness for them. Enjoy their unimprovable purpose as you sense it, and let those rivers that you never visit comfort you with the assurance that they are there, doing wonderfully what they have always done. — David R. Brower

I notice that, in the lecture ... which Prof. Lowry gave recently, in Paris ... he brought forward certain freak formulae for tartaric acid, in which hydrogen figures as bigamist ... I may say, he but follows the loose example set by certain Uesanians, especially one G. N. Lewis, a Californian thermodynamiter, who has chosen to disregard the fundamental canons of chemistry - for no obvious reason other than that of indulging in premature speculation upon electrons as the cause of valency — Henry Edward Armstrong

People always say that Californian women are obsessed with their appearance but I think you've got to take good care of yourself, for yourself. — Linda Gray

After a brief period in which I had let many a Southern Californian convince me that it was all 'in my mind,' I am once again officially allergic to dogs. — Josh Radnor

I crossed paths with a horse that happened to change my life. That horse is Game On Dude, and what a horse! He's a soldier. Together we traveled the world. We won the Santa Anita Big Cap, Goodwood, almost won the Breeder's Cup Classic; we won the San Antonio, Hollywood Gold Cup and the Californian. — Chantal Sutherland

Before I lived in America, my husband and I did a Californian road trip. We took a month, starting off in L.A. I love the landscapes of California: one moment you're in the desert, the next you're up in the Napa Valley or by the water in Big Bear. — Ashley Jensen

Only a Californian would have observed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the real fake from the fake fake. — Ada Louise Huxtable

Every four years, the Republican Party pines for another Reagan. But Ronald Reagan, Governor of California for eight years, couldn't get elected in today's not-so-Golden State. Jerry Brown, Governor Moonbeam back in the Seventies, now presides as Governor Twilight, lead vampire of a malign alliance of unionized bureaucrats and a swollen dependency class that maintains them in office at the expense of a remorselessly shrinking productive class. As the nation's demographic profile trends ever more Californian perhaps Norquist's predictions of naturally conservative Hispanics pining for a new Coolidge will come to fruition. Or perhaps Bob Beckel's more crudely determinative analysis will prove correct
that, in a multicultural society, jostling identity groups will stick with the party of ethnocultural spoils. — Mark Steyn

When working abroad you work pretty hard, but with time off, this is the greatest job in the world. You drive. You explore Memphis, or wherever you've landed, or go and see Dr John, or the Californian landscape. And, yes, I've had a few good meals. — Toby Jones

London and L.A. are both places I feel I can call home. It's a nice balance of Californian calm and that slightly more engaged, electric London vibe that I've always loved. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

I'd forgotten my identity as the world's most pathetic superhero, become a Californian instead. — Jonathan Lethem

I thought I was clever by greeting casting agents in my Australian accent and then switching to an American one during the performance. But the Australian accent seemed to put them off. Now it's the opposite; they love Australians. And with my thick Californian accent I now have a problem convincing them I'm Australian. — Jonathan LaPaglia

I know this kind of girl," Grace was saying. "It's the worst kind of combination of abuse and privilege, and growing up in this, like, greenhorn southern-Californian Asian upper-middle-class ghetto, where everyone is so shallow and money-craven. — Gary Shteyngart

I loved Wimbledon and what it meant, but the surface felt uncomfortable. I just didn't like it, I was a hard-court guy, a Californian kid. — Pete Sampras

What does a Californian make for dinner? Reservations. — Maureen Lipman

I consider myself almost a Californian at this point, because I've been here long enough. Obviously, when I first came to the land of blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer types, I was the sardonic, sarcastic, liquor-swilling, chain-smoking, dark-haired, dark-eyed guy from New York. — Reid Scott

One of the penalties of being president of the United States is that you must subsist for four years without drinking anything except Californian wine. — A.J.P. Taylor

I always wanted to be a Californian. In my wildest dreams, I always liked California - it's the place where oranges grows on trees! Fruit just falls off the trees. — Eric Burdon

As Amani frantically diced the ingredients for her Pan seared Mahi-Mahi with Mango Salsa, she recalled her first meeting with him during a class he taught on the presentation of food and organization the previous year. Amani had been immediately drawn to the tall, serious Californian, and not just because of his looks. With dark wavy hair, strong features and the deepest blue eyes she had ever seen short of Paul Newman's, David Spencer was everything Amani admired in a man, and then some. — Joanna Hynes

Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking- had he the gold? or the gold him? — John Ruskin

I've lived in California for half of my life. It's weird, everyone thinks of me as this guy who's from the South ... I'm really a Californian. — Billy Bob Thornton