It's highly competitive to be here. People don't come to California to drop out anymore. It's a very striving place.

I like narrative, and I ultimately am in love with the men and women I write about, most of them.

It's highly competitive to be here. People don't come to California to drop out anymore. It's a very striving place.

If the Pilgrims had landed in Santa Monica Bay rather than Boston, we'd have six states out here!

In our public life, California is on the verge of being a failed state, and no state has failed in the history of this country.

The Irish didn't read and write for a couple of thousand years, and I think we developed good memories and recall. We have a sense of the revelatory detail. I look for them.

I've always tried to write California history as American history. The paradox is that New England history is by definition national history, Mid-Atlantic history is national history. We're still suffering from that.