“He could not tell all of the California pines apart, the gray pine from the coulter, the bushop from the knobcone and the Monterey.”
Source: At the Edge of the Orchard
“If redwoods are the backbone of California, oaks are of England.”
Source: At the Edge of the Orchard
“Jules liked that I was a local. I made her feel authentic, which is especially important to Californians.”
Source: Battleborn
“My grandfather was an architect, and his father, and his father; one of them built houses only for millionaires in California, and that was where the family wealth came from, and one of them was certain that houses could be made to stand on the sand dunes of San Francisco, and that was where the family wealth went.”
Source: Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings
“Los Angeles is like a white world, filled with ever smaller white circles, leading to some perfect white core. Los Angeles is where the angels with their white capped teeth and their white tennis dresses, gradually edged closer to the pure center, ambrosia, the fountain of youth.”
Source: Lithium for Medea
“Snow White gets a Social Security card. She gets a job building houses out in California. Picks oranges.”
Source: Six-Gun Snow White
“Los Angeles: city that was nothing but a slot machine dispensing plastic toys.”
Source: Dance the Eagle to Sleep
“What Hero could tell before she could tell anything else was that the movie [Terminator 2] took place in California, even if supposedly it took place in the future; she recognized California, the quality of sunlight on the people’s faces, the way its particular weight flattened and loosened people’s expressions.”
Source: America Is Not the Heart
“I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa.”
Source: The Long Goodbye
“there was no point in owning anything in L.A. . . . in this she had a curious premonition or grasp of 'place.”
Source: Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.