quotations about Los Angeles
If you stay in Beverly Hills too long, you become a Mercedes.
ROBERT REDFORD
attributed, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said about California
I was just in Las Vegas, where prostitution is legal. Which is a relief because I live in Los Angeles, where it is mandatory.
GREG FITZSIMMONS
Los Angeles Magazine, Jun. 2005
To live sanely in Los Angeles ... you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist (firmly but not tensely) the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in your ear what you should desire, what you should fear, what you should wear and eat and drink and enjoy, what you should think and do and be.
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
"Los Angeles", Horizon, Oct. 1947
L.A.: Come on vacation, go home on probation.
JAMES ELLROY
Suicide Hill
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
"The Power of Never", How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2002
Los Angeles is the home of the three little white lies: "The Ferrari is paid for," "The mortgage is assumable," and "It's just a cold sore!"
MILTON BERLE
Los Angeles Magazine, Jun. 2005
Los Angeles is a great place. Where else can you smell the air and see it coming at you at the same time.
JACKIE GAYLE
Los Angeles Magazine, Jun. 2005
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 -- everybody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case.
MICHAEL CONNELLY
The Brass Verdict
A meteor from heaven upon
The heights of the Sierra shone,
As if it were a beam astray,
Shot forth from the eternal day!
And on the mountains, weird and old,
Night, awed, her starry rosary told,
And swelled a song that seemed to say,
In ecstasy of blessedness,
"Los Angeles! Los Angeles!"
JAMES ABRAHAM MARTLING
"Los Angeles", Poems of Home and Country
I could not take one more minute of trying to convince the people of Los Angeles that a workers' revolution and a complete overhaul of society was a tiny bit more exciting than getting a bit role in a Burger King commercial.
SUSIE BRIGHT
Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir
This is the city. Los Angeles, California. I work here. I carry a badge. My name's Friday. The story you are about to see is true; the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
SGT. JOE FRIDAY
Dragnet
Living in the Valley is like living in the background of a Road Runner cartoon. The scenery never changes: Taco Bell, palm tree, Taco Bell, palm tree.
ANDY COWAN
Los Angeles Magazine, Jun. 2005
I think it's only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see why a sane person would want to go there.
BILL BRYSON
The Lost Continent
Myth has it that engineers gave curves to L.A.'s first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway, from downtown to Pasadena, so that motorists wouldn't get bored.
GREGORY RODRIGUEZ
"Freeway Radicals", Los Angeles Magazine, May 1998