Quotes & Sayings About Los Angeles California

L.A. in the late sixties had a desolation about it, a disquiet. More than anything, that had to do with a feeling, one that you still find in parts of the San Fernando Valley. There was a sense of apocalyptic expanse, of sidewalks and houses centipeding over mountains and going on forever, combined with a shrugging kind of anchorlessness. Growing up I was always aware of L.A.'s diffuseness, its lack of an attachment to anything other than its own good reflection in the mirror. — Kim Gordon

Diana frowns. "You're taking me home, right? You just said you would." "Hoink hoink! Of course, piglet. But I meant your real home." "Which, last I checked," says Diana acidly, "is in Los Angeles, California, United States of America, solar system, planet Earth." "Hmm," says the boar, hiccupping dreamily. "That's what you think, darling. Tell me, can you say you've felt really at home at that address? Haven't you been homesick your whole life? — Martha N. Beck

Los Angeles makes the rest of California seem authentic. — Jonathan Culler

I am the grandson of immigrants from Japan who went to America, boldly going to a strange new world, seeking new opportunities. My mother was born in Sacramento, California. My father was a San Franciscan. They met and married in Los Angeles, and I was born there. — George Takei

Ben R. Rich, the ex-president of the famous "Skunk Works," Lockheed-Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP) group, revealed the truth just before he died. In an alumni speech at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1993, he said, "We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity . . . Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do. — Len Kasten

French Polynesia embraces a vast ocean area strewn with faraway outer islands, each with a mystique of its own. The 118 islands and atolls are scattered over an expanse of water 18 times the size of California, though in dry land terms the territory is only slightly bigger than Rhode Island. The distance from one end of the island groups to another is four times further than from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Every oceanic island type is represented in these sprawling archipelagoes positioned midway between California and New Zealand. The coral atolls of the Tuamotus are so low they're threatened by rising sea levels, while volcanic Tahiti soars to 2,241 meters. Bora Bora and Maupiti, also high volcanic islands, rise from the lagoons of what would otherwise be atolls.
— David Stanley

He said that for those who hadn't been to California, what it was most like was an enchanted island. The spitting image. Just like in the movies, but better. People live in houses, not apartment buildings, he said, and then he embarked on a comparison of houses (one-story, at most two-story), and four- or five-story buildings where the elevator is broken one day and out of order the next. The only way buildings compared favorably to houses was in terms of proximity. A neighborhood of buildings makes distances shorter, he said. Everything is closer. You can go walking to buy groceries or you can walk to your local tavern (here he winked at Reverend Foster), or the local church you belong to, or a museum. In other words, you don't need to drive. You don't even need a car. And here he recited a list of statistics on fatal car accidents in a county of Detroit and a county of Los Angeles. And that's even considering that cars are made in Detroit, he said, not Los Angeles. — Roberto Bolano

All this cut-price transcendentalism does not prevent California from being a startlingly physical state. This becomes most obvious where Los Angeles saunters down to the sea. The region is called Venice. — Quentin Crisp

Los Angeles is a town where status is all and status is only given to success. Dukes and millionaires and playboys by the dozen may arrive and be glad-handed for a time, but they are unwise if they choose to live there because the town is, perhaps even creditably, committed to recognising only professional success, and nothing else, to be of lasting value. The burdensome obligation imposed on all its inhabitants is therefore to present themselves as successes, because otherwise they forfeit their right to respect in that environment ... There is no place in that town for the "interesting failure" or for anyone who is not determined on a life that will be shaped in a upward-heading curve. — Julian Fellowes

A lot of the people in Northern California and parts of Oregon have decided that we are not on the same page as San Francisco and Portland and Los Angeles. I don't know if six states is a solution because is Washington, D.C. and the rest of the country really going to give California 10 new senators? — Doug LaMalfa

I travelled to California when I was 18 and went to Los Angeles State College. — Robert Vaughn

I spoke with the crows before leaving for Los Angeles. They were the resident storytellers whose strident and insistent voices added the necessary dissonance for color. They had cousins in California, and gave me their names and addresses, told me to look them up. They warned me, too, what they had heard about attitude there. And they were right. Attitude was thick, hung from the would-be's and has-beens and think-they-ares, so thick that I figured it was the major source of the smog. — Joy Harjo

To me, Los Angeles and California and executive power are about big, open warehouse buildings. Tech companies are buying oversized buildings, because they project growth immediately. — James Pearse Connelly

My favorite drive is Highway 101 in California between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo. I love the 101; Highway 1 is too windy, and 5 is too boring - the 101 is just right. It's like the Mama Bear of scenic drives. — Art Alexakis

Fresno Bulldogs: This gang is one of the few California Hispanic gangs not to claim allegiance to the Surenos or Nortenos. Latin Kings: This Chicago-based group consists of more than 160 cliques in 30 states and has as many as 35,000 members. Mara Salvatrucha (or M.S. 13): This violent Hispanic organization has origins in El Salvador. It has roughly 8,000 members in the United States and another 20,000 outside the United States. Bloods: With its roots in Los Angeles, this African American street gang exists in 123 cities and 33 states. Crips: Also founded in Los Angeles, this African American gang exists in 40 states and has 30,000 to 35,000 members. Gangster Disciples: This Chicago-based African American gang is active in at least 31 states and has more than 25,000 members. Vice Lord Nation: This Chicago-based African American gang has around 30,000 members in 28 states. — Steven Briggs

One feature about Los Angeles that I particularly love is the chance for association with all kinds of creative artists, a thing I never before have had. I certainly do love a number of the writers, the painters, the musicians, and the sculptors that I meet here ... Next to the sunshine, I appreciate it the most of anything in California. — Gene Stratton-Porter

In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California. — Saul Bellow

[In] NIVO 1, LLC v. Antunez, 217 Cal.App.4th Supp. 1 (2013) The Appellate Division of the Los Angeles Superior Court held that a tenant may not be evicted for failure to buy renter's insurance even if the lease requires purchasing insurance. — Madeline Howard

Hidden Highlands was maybe a little richer but not that different from many of the other small, wealthy and scared enclaves nestled in the hills and valleys around Los Angeles. Walls and gates, guardhouses and private security forces were the secret ingredients of the so-called melting pot of southern California. — Michael Connelly

I imagined that my own life was simple and sweet, and sometimes it was, but there were odd things going on around town. There were rumors. There were stories. Everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable. This mystical flirtation was the idea of "sin" - this sense that it was possible to go "too far," and that many people were doing it - was very much with us in Los Angeles in 1968 and 1969. A demented and vortical tension was building in the community. The jitters were setting in. I recall a time when the dogs barked every night and the moon was always full. — Joan Didion

The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story. — Michael Connelly

Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really droppped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically
any way you want to look at it
everbody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case. — Michael Connelly

The rules that have been imposed, the rules that are already on the books haven't been effective. If you look at the places where the strictest gun control measures, whether it be California, Los Angeles, Barack Obama's home state in Chicago, they're a disaster, and they have the greatest rules in the world. — Sean Hannity

Even though it was January, in Los Angeles it was beautiful and sunny and the blue skies were out and it was hot everyday, so I think it was just a product of our environment. And California to me as a concept or as an idea always seems like endless optimism and endless opportunity - when people think of California they think of palm trees and blue skies and gorgeous sunsets and beaches and everything else. But there's also this weirdness to California, this darkness, it's a place where people come to follow their dreams and sometimes don't make it. — Mark Hoppus

One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It's not like if you're in Los Angeles, where everyone's so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you're down, they shun you. Also, all that sunshine is a cruel joke when you're depressed. In New York, even in your misery, you feel like you belong. — Mindy Kaling

I'm wary of the whole Los Angeles scene. I'm a California kid, but there's a difference between California and Los Angeles. L.A. is urban. California is restorative. — Jason Lewis

The thing that really surprised me about strip malls in California, specifically Los Angeles, is that they have some really fantastic restaurants. — Dave Foley

Mulholland Drive is a two-lane, serpentine road that runs along the crest of the mountains and is named after the guy who built a two-hundred-mile aqueduct to drain water from the Northern California delta down to Los Angeles just so developers could get rich building homes in a place that otherwise is inhospitable to human life. The whole city is a carefully — Lee Goldberg

What does she do?"
"She's a producer." Of course, in Los Angeles this doesn't mean much more than "she's a member of the human race. — Julian Fellowes

Regarding the air raid over Los Angeles it was learned by Army G2 that Rear Admiral Anderson ... recovered an unidentified airplane off the coast of California ... with no bearing on conventional explanation. This Headquarters has come to the determination that the mystery airplanes are in fact not earthly and, according to secret intelligence sources, they are in all probability of interplanetary origin. — George C. Marshall

This is the beginning of your life in America," Julio said. "We'll take a freight train from Sunnyside and go to nowhere." "I would like to go to California," I said. "I have two brothers there - but I don't know if I could find them." "All roads go to California and all travelers wind up in Los Angeles," Julio said. "But not this traveler. I have lived there too long. I know that state too damn well ... ." "What do you mean?" I asked. Suddenly he became sad and said: "It is hard to be a Filipino in California. — Carlos Bulosan

In California, the state's huge dairy herd produces twenty-seven million tons of manure a year, the particulates and vapors from which have helped to make air quality in the argiculturally intensive San Joaquin Valley worse than it is Los Angeles. — Paul Roberts

Cities are distinguished by the catastrophic forms they presuppose and which are a vital part of their essential charm. New York is King Kong, or the blackout, or vertical bombardment: Towering Inferno. Los Angeles is the horizontal fault, California breaking off and sliding into the Pacific: Earthquake. — Jean Baudrillard

We had just recently moved to California from Italy, and while we were driving around, we saw a billboard ad for McDonald's on Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles. The word 'guess' was in the ad, and my brother decided that that would be the name of our company! — Paul Marciano

The bag was a hybrid I had picked up at a store called Suitcase City while I was plotting my comeback. [ ... ] It had a logo on it
a mountain ridgeline with the words "Suitcase City" printed across it like the Hollywood sign. Above it, skylights swept the horizon, completing the dream image of desire and hope. I think that logo was the real reason I liked the bag. Because I knew Suitcase City wasn't a store. It was a place. It was Los Angeles. — Michael Connelly

It was not possible to film in California, because all the areas are heavily built up now. Coming to Cape Town is an invitation to step into the past and recreate Los Angeles of the 1930s. — Robert Towne

I have always identified with Joan Didion's depiction of Los Angeles and Southern California, ever since reading 'Play It As It Lays,' 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' and 'The White Album.' — Henry Rollins

Sam Temple was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Los Angeles, where there were specialists there in burn injuries. He wasn't consulted: he was found on his knees, obviously in shock, extensively burned. EMTs took over.
Astrid Ellison was taken to a hospital in Santa Barbara, as was Diana Ladris.
Other kids were shared out among half a dozen hospitals. Some specialized in plastic surgery, others in the effects of starvation.
Over the next week all were seen by psychiatrists once their immediate physical injuries were addressed. Lots of psychiatrists. And when they weren't being seen by psychiatrists, they were being seen by FBI agents, and California Highway Patrol investigators, and lawyers from the district attorney's office.
The consensus seemed to be that a number of the Perdido survivors, as they were now known, would be prosecuted for crimes ranging from simple assault to murder.
First on that list was Sam Temple. — Michael Grant

The Hell's Angels are very definitely a lower-class phenomenon, but their backgrounds are not necessarily poverty-stricken. Despite some grim moments, their parents seem to have had credit. Most of the outlaws are the sons of people who came to California either just before or during World War II. Many have lost contact with their families, and I have never met an Angel who claimed to have a hometown in any sense that people who use that term might understand it. Terry the Tramp, for instance, is "from" Detroit, Norfolk, Long Island, Los Angeles, Fresno and Sacramento. As a child, he lived all over the country, not in poverty but in total mobility. Like most of the others, he has no roots. He relates entirely to the present, the moment, the action. — Hunter S. Thompson

In 1935, the Los Angeles Police Department, via mayoral directive, sends a battalion of police officers to the Nevada border to stop hitchhikers, primarily Mexican nationals, from entering the state of California. They return after four days and report that they were unable to stem the flow of immigration. — James Frey

I'm very stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes - it's all getting infilled. — Edward Ruscha

California Governor Gray Davis visited an elementary school here in Los Angeles where he taught a class. I don't want to say he was unpopular but the kids gave him a wedgie and stuffed him in a locker. — Jay Leno

Chiron looked surprised. I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles. — Rick Riordan

We were living in California, and it just wasn't conducive for the lifestyle that we wanted with kids. Los Angeles is tricky to get around, there's paparazzi to deal with, and I had this feeling that I just wanted to move back to Australia. — Chris Hemsworth

It's [Los Angeles] mostly full of nonsense and delusion and egomania. They think they'll be young and beautiful forever, even though most of them aren't even young and beautiful now. — Christopher Hitchens

There's one Baldessari work I genuinely love and would like to own, maybe because of my Midwestern roots and love of driving alone. 'The backs of all the trucks passed while driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, California, Sunday, 20 January 1963' consists of a grid of 32 small color photographs depicting just what the title says. — Jerry Saltz

I read the Life magazine articles about free love and free dope in California. At age 20 I drove to Los Angeles. — Glenn Frey

Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they'll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they'll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they'll tell you Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they'll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they'll say Lookout Mountain. So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain. — Joni Mitchell

I've been through the process qualifying for the World Cup, which is an amazing, two-year process. It was an honor to represent the U.S. and to represent the city of Los Angeles and California. — Cobi Jones

Instead of basic roads and bridges, infrastructure spending will go to bloated unions overseeing pie-in-the-sky construction projects like the $30 billion-plus high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which California officials fully expect to be funded. — Michelle Malkin

Well, I know a guy, he's from far far away
He's a songwriter, he got something to say
He says, "People in this city are too busy to hang out
This town's so spread out, no one would hear you if you shout"
Everyone's got a script to sell and someplace else they want to be
There's always a lock that would open if you could just find the key"
(It Ain't Easy Being Green) — Shannon McNally

Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought. — Joseph Barbera

I graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with an English literature degree and travelled for a year before going to work. — Natalie Massenet

In San Francisco one felt the spirit of optimism and enterprise. Los Angeles, on the other hand, was an ugly city, hot and oppressive, and the people looked sallow and anaemic. It was a much warmer climate but had not the freshness of San Francisco; nature has endowed the north of California with resources that will endure and flourish when Hollywood has disappeared into the prehistoric tar-pits of Wilshire Boulevard. — Charlie Chaplin

In 1970, a superior Court judge issues an order forcing the desegregation of Los Angeles schools. The judge survives an assassination attempt and loses his job in the next election. — James Frey

That wasn't Josh Hartnett; that kid was eighteen years old," Kate said.
I told you, they age slower out here. It's all the fresh California air," Val replied.
Yes, because that's exactly what Los Angeles is known for," Kate said dryly. "Clean air. — Julie James

I've always wanted to be able to say that I come from Los Angeles, California and feel quintessentially American - even if I said that in Spanish. — Cheech Marin

I live in a Spanish-style hillside home in Los Angeles, California. I paid $900,000 in 1995. It's perhaps worth about $3m now. Thankfully, I paid off my mortgage before the crash because I could see it coming. I worried that I would be caught having to pay off a very high mortgage for a house I couldn't sell. — Eric Idle

Saying you're an alcoholic and an addict is like saying you're from Los Angeles and from California. — Carrie Fisher

I've been a California girl all of my life and have spent much of it on the many highways that intersect all over Los Angeles County. — Nancy Isaak

I have never lived in New York City, but a lot of people think that I am a New Yorker, because I was embraced by the Downtown scene since the 1980s. For the record I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. — Vaginal Davis