Quotes About California

California ... is the place that sets the trends and establishes the values for the rest of the country; like a slow ooze, California culture spreads eastward across the land.

When I ran against George Bush Sr. in 1992, and we did very well in New Hampshire, and then we went on to California, it was four, five months later, I got 30 percent in the counties in Southern California, because Californians wanted us to do something about thousands of people walking into our country on weekends, and the president of the United States and the government of the United States, unlike General Eisenhower who dealt with it, did nothing. And that's what Trump is riding.

Myths that need clarification: "Everyone in California lives on a white, sandy beach." False. The only people who live on California beaches are vacationers from Arizona, Utah, and Nevada who own condos.

I think this is exactly where the action is, is in the middle. I have seen it when I was governor of the state of California. I have seen it firsthand, that the only way we brought Democrats and Republicans together, we could really solve very important issues. I remember that's how we really started rebuilding California and invested $60 billion in infrastructure.

For the women in California, they're just downtrodden because they're so gorgeous here. Every hot cheerleader comes to California to make it. The men don't want to get married, they're lazy lions. Matthew McConaughey is their poster boy so they can procreate and live on the beach in the trailer and have kids and have money and be hedonistic.

Instead, California is one of only 10 states that provides in-state college and university tuition to illegal immigrants. That's grossly unfair to a legal high school student who moves out of California for a year, then returns to attend college.

In my opinion, Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't qualified to be governor of California.

Who today is willing to say that Texas and California and the remainder of the Southwest would be better off if they were governed by Mexico?

I have a commission to do a piece in a place in California, Oliver Ranch, which has an eight-storey structure called The Tower designed by the visual artist Ann Hamilton.

The first treasure California began to surrender after the Gold Rush as the oldest: her land.

When I was young, I went to college, had a teacher who was, had been a student of Trilling's at Columbia, this was in California. And he, I started reading him around that time, and then I went to Columbia as well, Trilling was still teaching there, I took a course with him. He was not a great teacher, but he was, when I was younger, he was a good model for the kind of criticism I wanted to do, because he thought very dialectically.

On another level, I want to mention that I have a strong Jewish identity and - over the years - have been involved in several Jewish projects, such as the establishment of a strong program of Judaic Studies at the University of California in San Diego.

Over the years, I've traveled to many places for inspiration and research, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina, California, and Hawaii.

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

It's fun to be in California. The police are kind of weird here. They ask you stupid questions. 'Do you know why I pulled you over?' Because I have pot in the glove compartment?

As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing, That side was made for you and me. This land is your land, this land is my land From California to the New York island From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.

Since the late 1970's, the main focus of prisons has been punishment, not rehabilitation. It's hard to believe, but you would be hard-pressed to find a meaningful violence-prevention class in a federal or state penitentiary. And 'we the people' are footing the bill to keep these folks imprisoned. It costs on average $46,000 a year to keep an adult incarcerated in California and about the same for New York State.

I'm never going to get married again. Three strikes, you're out. I think if I would try to get married again in California, I have to go to prison, don't I? I think you only get three.

We have a historic system in place since the early part of the last century and this is going to be one of the biggest battles in California if we decide to take it on.

How does the [New York] Times treat White pathology? They reported an epidemic of heroin addiction in the Philadelphia suburbs. which included emergency admissions and overdoses; these White people in the suburbs were doing heroin like it was going out of style. I counted the words: the article consisted of 200 words. "Heroin Epidemic" in the back section. Out here in California, the typical drug addict is a housewife or suburban White woman.

[Lennie meets Joe - he works out that she was named after John Lennon] I nod. "Mom was a hippie." This is northern Northern California after all - the final frontier of freakerdom. Just in the eleventh grade we have a girl named Electricity, a guy named Magic Bus, and countless flowers: Tulip, Begonia, and Poppy - all parent-given-on-the-birth-certificate names. Tulip is a two-ton bruiser of a guy who would be the star of out football team if we were the kind of school that has optional morning meditation in the gym

Dr. Leonard Shlain, chairman of laparoscopic surgery at California Pacific Medical Center, said they took some four and five year-olds and gave them video games and asked them to figure out how to play them without instructions. Then they watched their brain activity with real-time monitors. At first, when they were figuring out the games, he said, the whole brain lit up. But by the time they knew how to play the games, the brain went dark, except for one little point.

I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another.

I just find this interesting that Ronald Reagan was regarded much the way Donald Trump is except Reagan was governor of California. He had run for the nomination the Republican Party in '76. But he was laughed at. They thought he was dumb then. They thought he was slow minded and dim-witted back then. They thought he couldn't speak. They thought Reagan - amazingly, a guy that later became known as the Great Communicator - couldn't speak.

I like being a foreigner. For me, to live in California is very pleasant - I'm more comfortable not feeling a part of everything, not feeling responsible for the government or the roads or the health system.

Maybe it's because we as writers are alone so often, are so attuned to listening to the run of our own thoughts, that we find it more natural to write down the thoughts rather than the deeds of our characters. But speaking as a teacher who has spent some twenty years slogging through manuscripts where thoughts and exposition pile up as thick as the aftermath of a California mudslide, I can attest to the power of the evocative detail, gesture, or figment of speech.

California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

It's funny, but when I arrived in California to start college I was much more interested in becoming a surfer and cruise along in life from one beach to the next. I didn't plan out any huge career for myself.

The sixteen hundred dairies in California’s Central Valley alone produce more waste than a city of twenty-one million people-that’s more than the populations of London, New York, and Chicago combined.

I’m just some white guy in California, and nobody in Flint is going to pay any attention to what I’m saying. I don’t blame them. Nor do doctors want to publicly agree with me, because nobody wants to downplay the effects of lead poisoning. I get that too. I can already imagine the number of tweets and emails I’m going to get demanding to know why I think Flint is no big deal.

One of the things I had a hard time getting used to when I came to California in '78 was Santa Claus in shorts.

Clearly, high energy prices will have a large negative effect on the California economy and could possibly drag the rest of the nation into a recession.

But these days, there's also a strong economic argument for doing away with capital punishment. With California facing its most severe fiscal crisis in recent memory... it would be crazy not to consider the fact that it will add as much as $1 billion over the next five years simply to keep the death penalty on the books.

My Christmas present to myself each year is to see how much air travel can open up the world and take me to places as far from sheltered California and Japan as possible.

Hey, I didn't make a big deal out of Hotel California. The 18 million people that bought it did.

I live in California, where there's a lot of driving entailed. I'm usually going somewhere to be on time to meet someone so I'm necessarily engaged in time. And yet, how can I in that moment of driving my car, be aware of that which is not going anywhere?

Already this war on gangs in California is taking money from universities to build prisons, and the universities have some clout.

Everywhere you look, there is a charity or a project in school to get involved in. In eighth grade, there was this program called CJSF, California Junior Scholarship Foundation. We were involved in soup kitchens and toy drives, and your school can set up something like that. If your school doesn't have a program like that, set one up.

I worry these days that Latinos in California speak neither Spanish nor English very well. They are in a kind of linguistic limbo between the two. They don't really have a language, and are, in some deep sense, homeless.

When I came home for the summer after my first year of college, I told my mother that my best friend and I were driving to California. She laughed out loud - 2,000 miles in a what? Well, my best friend had an old Chevy. What could go wrong?

California is choosing between the lesser of, uh, 300 evils.

You know, I think, people of all stripes in California, Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, frankly, as I have traveled the state, the number one issue is jobs. And they are looking for which candidate can get the economy back on track.

It started with Ronald Reagan, when he took away the financing to the California universities. It used to be cheap to send your kids to the UCs. They'd call it an investment, because the more you educate people, the more they'll pay in taxes, because they'll get better jobs. But Reagan said, "No, it's a cost, so you're going to have to pay the cost." So now people can't afford to get an education. Anyway, I don't want to get too political, but yeah, I think the spirit of this country is finally coming back, and hopefully it will triumph.

I'm happy wherever I go, whatever I do. I'm happy in Iowa, I'm happy here in California.

I got elected president. I won easily. I won a race that should never be won by a Republican because it's so stacked in the Democrats' favor. I mean, if you figure California, New York, and Illinois, you start off with losing that - you have to run the entire East Coast and every - and the entire Midwest. I won an election that should never be won, because the Electoral College is far harder to win than the popular vote. The popular vote, for me, would have been much easier.

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.

I may yet move [from Nashville], and where would I move if not Texas or New Mexico? I couldn't afford a home in California. I need to travel out of there occasionally.

The Dalai Lama acknowledges that he's met Westerners who to some extent are clearly Easterners at heart, and he would never want them not to become Buddhists just because they happened to be born in California.