California Quotes - Page 23

• Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.

  Neal Stephenson

  Southern, Bustle, Spots

  Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.6, Spectra

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The girls in California were probably prettier in a standard sense than the New York girls--blonder and in better health, I guess; but I still preferred the way the girls in New York looked--stranger and more neurotic (a girl always looked more beautiful and fragile when she was about to have a nervous breakdown).

  Andy Warhol

  Beautiful, Girl, New York

  Andy Warhol (1990). “POPism: The Warhol '60s”, Harvest Books

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000.

  Michael Lewis

  Mexican, House, Income

  Michael Lewis (2015). “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (movie tie-in)”, p.111, W. W. Norton & Company

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• No, he hadn’t just dragged her to California. He’d dragged her into a cursed eternity. A burden that should have been his alone to bear.

  Lauren Kate

  Should Have, Bears, Eternity

  Lauren Kate (2011). “The Fallen Sequence: An Omnibus Edition”, p.556, Delacorte Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Like so many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts--census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Cities, Shopping, Issues

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “The Crying of Lot 49”, p.10, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.

  Charles Portis

  Girl, Horse, Father

  "True Grit". Book by Charles Portis, Chapter 1 (p. 9), 1968.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My blood is too thick for California: I have never been able to properly explain myself in this climate.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Blood, Fear And Loathing, Able

  Hunter S. Thompson (2010). “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream”, p.14, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• They write songs about California girls for a reason.

  Sarah Mlynowski

  Girl, Song, Writing

  Sarah Mlynowski (2011). “Ten Things We Shouldn't Have Done”, p.102, Hachette UK

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Home, Tired, Heart

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.47, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• But I have never had the privilege of unhappiness in Happy Valley. California is about the good life. So a bad life there seems so much worse than a bad life anywhere else. Quality is an obsession there—good food, good wine, good movies, music, weather, cars. Those sound like the right things to shoot for, but the never-ending quality quest is a lot of pressure when you’re uncertain and disorganized and, not least, broker than broke. Some afternoons a person just wants to rent Die Hard, close the curtains, and have Cheerios for lunch.

  Sarah Vowell

  Good Life, Wine, Lunch

  7 Copy quote

• California is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she's on top of the world, not knowing she's dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks.

  S. E. Hinton

  Beautiful, Believe, Kids

  S. E. Hinton (1995). “The Outsiders: That was Then, this is Now ; Rumble Fish”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Americans take a product that literally grows on trees and turn it into a valuable commodity. Without them, cocaine and marijuana would be like oranges, and instead of making billions smuggling it, I’d be making pennies doing stoop labor in some California field, picking it.

  Don Winslow

  Marijuana, Orange, Tree

  "The Power of the Dog". Book by Don Winslow, 2005.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Theodor Geisel (otherwise known as Dr. Seuss) spent his workdays ensconced in his private studio, the walls lined with sketches and drawings, in a bell-tower outside his La Jolla, California, house. Geisel was a much more quiet man than his jocular rhymes suggest. He rarely ventured out in public to meet his young readership, fretting that kids would expect a merry, outspoken, Cat in the Hat–like figure, and would be disappointed with his reserved personality. “In mass, [children] terrify me,” he admitted.

  Susan Cain

  Children, Wall, Cat

  Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.86, Broadway Books

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.

  Charles Bukowski

  Reality, Southern, Graveyard

  Charles Bukowski (2003). “Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you've had good gin on a hot day in Southern California with the people you love, you forget Nebraska. The two things cannot coexist. The stronger, better of the two wins.

  Ann Patchett

  Love You, Winning, Two

  Jenna Blum, Maggie O'Farrell, Molly Gloss, Nicole Mones, Elizabeth Benedict (2010). “The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels”, p.1170, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Major part of the Southern California pop scene in the 60s
  "People think that love is an emotion. Love is good sense."

  Ken Kesey

  Life, Love Is, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• When a fissure off the California coast started pumping and dumping oil on the nearby towns and beaches, everybody started dumping on Union Oil. Matters weren't helped one iota by a manufactured quotation attributed to Union's president, Fred Hartley, alleging his amazement at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.... Fred Hartley never said what the press reported, as the transcript and the Senate committee members definitely established. But I don't suppose the truth will ever catch up with the more colorful falsehood.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Beach, Nature, Loss

  4 Copy quote

• California must be all American or all Chinese. We are resolved that it shall be American, and are prepared to make it so. May we not rely upon your sympathy and assistance?

  Denis Kearney

  Sympathy, Rely Upon, Chinese

  7 Copy quote

• I'm looking California, And feeling Minnesota...

  Chris Cornell

  Life, Feelings, Minnesota

  "Song: Outshined (Badmotorfinger)". December 1991.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The California proposition [Prop. 187] is one I would agree with. That's the easiest way to put it.

  Bob Dole

  Immigration, Way, Props

  7 Copy quote

• My brother Julio and I worked to improve the quality of wines from California and to put fine wine on American dinner tables at a price people could afford.

  Ernest Gallo

  Brother, Wine, People

  "American wine giant Ernest Gallo dies", www.theguardian.com. March 7, 2007.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• From a wine critic's perspective, there are far too many innocuous, over-oaked, over-acidified, or over-cropped wines emerging from California. While those sins would not be a problem if the wines sold for under $20, many are in fact $75-$150. That's appalling.

  Robert M. Parker, Jr.

  Wine, Perspective, Facts

  7 Copy quote

• So the British, of all ages, still walk the course. On trips to Florida or the American desert, they still marvel, or shudder, at the fleets of electric carts going off in the morning like the first assault wave at the Battle of El Alamein. It is unlikely, for some time, that a Briton will come across in his native land such a scorecard as Henry Longhurst rescued from a California club and cherished till the day he died. The last on its list of local rules printed the firm warning "A Player on Foot Has No Standing on the Course."

  Alistair Cooke

  Morning, Golf, Player

  4 Copy quote

• The travel and tourism industry is the lifeblood of many states around the country - including Florida, California, New York and Nevada, to name a few.

  Mark Foley

  Country, Travel, New York

  8 Copy quote

• Most loss of life and property has been due to the collapse of antiquated and unsafe structures, mostly of brick and other masonry. ... There is progress of California toward building new construction according to earthquake-resistant design. We would have less reason to ask for earthquake prediction if this was universal.

  Charles Francis Richter

  Life, Loss, Science

  Earthquake information bulletin, Volume 12, Issue 1, p. 8, 1980.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source