Best 222 quotes in «los angeles quotes» category

The old folk from Indiana and Iowa and Illinois, from Boston and Kansas City and Des Moines, they sold their homes and their stores, and they came here by train and by automobile to the land of sunshine, to die in the sun, with just enough money to live until the sun killed them, tore themselves out by the roots in their last days, deserted the smug prosperity of Kansas City and Chicago and Peoria to find a place in the sun. And when they got here they found that other and greater thieves had already taken possession, that even the sun belonged to the others; Smith and Jones and Parker, druggist, banker, baker, dust of Chicago and Cincinnati and Cleveland on their shoes, doomed to die in the sun, a few dollars in the bank, enough to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, enough to keep alive the illusion that this was paradise, that their little papier-mâché homes were castles.

This is why I wanted to write this book, to tell about a place I love that doesn’t belong to me but feels like it is mine, and how that feels like a marvelous and exceptional thing. All the things that are wrong in the world seems conquered by a library’s simple unspoken promise: Here is my story, please listen; here I am, please tell me your story.

There are times when Los Angeles is the most magical city on Earth. When the Santa Ana winds sweep through and the air is warm and so, so clear. When the jacaranda trees bloom in the most brilliant lilac violet. When the ocean sparkles on a warm February day and you're pushing fine grains of sand through your bare toes while the rest of the country is hunkered down under blankets slurping soup. But other times, like when the jacaranda trees drop their blossoms in an eerie purple rain, Los Angeles feels like only a half-formed dream. Like perhaps the city was founded as a strip mall in the early 1970s and has no real reason to exist. An afterthought from the designer of some other, better city. A playground made only for attractive people to eat expensive salads.

There is no question that Los Angeles expects its long-termers to survive the inevitable and chronic ass-kickings alone.

They pine for the hip, frosty girlfriend they abandoned for a pleasant if unexciting marriage to her sunnier, less mentally present sister coast.

There are never any real stars in LA, but we’ve got a bunch of fake ones made out of brass and terrazzo. We embed them in the sidewalks outside of strip clubs and gift shops— Walk of Fame, walk of shame… walk of names we’re all destined to forget sooner or later.

Through political opportunism and ineptitude, the city had allowed the [police] department to languish for years as an understaffed and underequipped paramilitary organization. Infected with political bacteria itself, the department was top-heavy with managers while the ranks below were so thin that the dog soldiers on the street rarely had the time or inclination to step out of their protective machines, their cars, to meet the people they served. They only ventured out to deal with the dirtbags and consequently, Bosch knew, it had created a police culture in which everybody not in blue was seen as a dirtbag and was treated as such. Everybody.

Venice was a contrast from Los Angeles itself, where you might see a woman with $15,000 tits, a face frozen in place by Botox, wobbling with her $4,000 Gucci bag right past a child with a sunken belly and exposed ribs encaging a heart too weak to scream.

Tossing a smile my way I nodded back to her. Veronica had come home. Somewhere in a thirty-six dollar a night shack a Nazi dwarf was making it with two call girls. Los Angeles was one hell of a city.

Trying to get information out of a Los Angeles lawyer was like opening a can of sardines without a key.

you chippy hunk of shit,/don't bad mouth me! I'm/the toughest guy in town, you don't know/who the hell you're in this room/with!

When I lived in Los Angeles I never savored warm nights. You don't savor things that last forever.

When you got no wheels you're no place in L. A.

We get in the car, and someone signals their blinker for my parking spot but I emphatically wave them away like they're after my soul and not just my parking spot. And so we sit there for twelve minutes until the meter runs out. Lily silently crawls from the passenger seat into my lap and curls up into a little ball. She lets out an enormous sigh.

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)

When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.

You have the Answer. Just get quiet enough to hear it. ~Pat Obuchowski

Basically, what happened was, I had moved out to Los Angeles, I was pretty damn lazy and I put on some pounds.

A lot of people can forget about you in Los Angeles.

Anyone living in Los Angeles who has opposable thumbs is required to write a screenplay.

As you know, today was Don't Take Your Illegal Immigrant To Work Day here in Los Angeles. No, all across the nation they had a Day Without Immigrants, is what they call it. Or, as Native Americans call it, the good ol' days.

Anyone living in Los Angeles who says they don't need a psychiatrist, needs a psychiatrist.

Being in a bathtub with Jackie Chan, I don't know, it has a way of bonding you I'll tell you that. I don't know if there are some weird undertones. It was like we had met in Los Angeles and we didn't have that much to say to each other but, after that bathtub scene, we were great friends.

Billy [Corgan] and I used to spend quite a lot of time together in Los Angeles, when I first moved there.

Fortunately, I was still living in Los Angeles at the time. So I went out to World Gym and got a membership.

BJ Novak gets the Perseverance Award for graduating from Harvard and being unemployed for the entire plane ride to Los Angeles.

Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.

Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world.

For me, returning to Los Angeles annihilates the memories of where I have just been with an astonishing speed.

Friends in the Midwest often ask me what it's like to raise a family in Los Angeles. I say it's just like where they are, but warmer and with more traffic. I also tell them people here seem a bit more tolerant of those who are different.

George Clooney and Fabio apparently got into a scuffle at a restaurant in Los Angeles over the weekend. George thought the women with Fabio were taking pictures of him. How embarrassed is George Clooney to be in a fight with Fabio? Who is he going to call out next, Lorenzo Lamas?

I become friends with people in each city who can show me around. Like if someone came to Los Angeles they wouldn't really know where to go, so they'd have to call me up and then I'd show them around.

I attended private Catholic schools in Paris and Los Angeles through high school.

I am an eighth Chinese, and I come from a large Chinese-American family in Los Angeles.

I am back in Los Angeles after a very successful run in Chicago as Billy Flynn.

I attended college in Los Angeles and wore black pumps to work every day.

I'd been out in Los Angeles for about eight years, knocking around. I actually, instead of waiting tables, worked in offices as a temporary assistant.

I'd come out to Los Angeles for a vacation to see a friend and just fell in love with it.

I both love and am terrified by Greg Van Eekhout's vision of Los Angeles. I already want to go back.

I discovered Los Angeles in the late 90s. The city was not at its best at the time, but I fell for it right away. There is something almost haunted about it, a vibrant mythology I find rather inspiring.

I didn't like Los Angeles very much but I like San Francisco.

I did Playboy. There was an ad in the paper for playmates. Playboy called me and flew me to Los Angeles, and I was on the March cover of 1992.

I'd like to live in Paris, New York, and Los Angeles all at the same time.

I don't know my armpit from my elbow in Los Angeles.

I enjoy going to Palm Springs when I'm living in Los Angeles.

I don't live in Los Angeles and I don't do a lot of superfluous press.

I don't really know anything about the movie business, even though I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life - somehow I've never bumped into it.

If you ever thought you were ugly, Los Angeles is the place to come and find out you were right.

If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture - not only national culture but global culture.

If you tilt the whole country sideways, Los Angeles is the place where everything loose will fall.