"What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there."

"According to CoreLogic, the median house price in Los Angeles is $456,000. This compares with a median price of $187,000 in Houston. There is a similar story for other cities across the state. I won’t even mention house prices in San Francisco. Higher housing costs are a predictable result of restricting supply; it is far more difficult to arrange a new development in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles or other California population centers than in Texas. Builders will have to meet environmental restrictions and density limits in many areas. The Census Bureau reports that between 1980 and 2010 the number of housing units in Texas increased by 81.9 percent, compared with just 41.3 percent in California."

"California, I'll be knocking on the golden doorLike an angel, standing in a shaft of lightRising up to paradise, I know I'm going to shine."

"[T]here is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval."

"California's like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me."

"If everybody had an ocean across the USA, Then everybody'd be surfin' like Californ-I-A."

"It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year."

"Whatever starts in California unfortunately has a tendency to spread."

"California, home of Xicanismo in my opinion"

"California has experienced rapid population growth for most of its history, but that trend has come to an end. California’s population grew by 2.9 percent over the last three years, only slightly above the nation’s 2.4 percent increase. Over the last few decades, millions of Californians have left the Golden State for opportunities elsewhere."

"California assumed a bitterly unfriendly attitude toward the Chinaman. Already has she driven them from her altars of justice. Already has she stamped them as outcasts and handed them over to popular contempts and vulgar jest. Already are they the constant victims of cruel harshness and brutal violence. Already have our Celtic brothers, never slow to execute the behests of popular prejudice against the weak and defenseless, recognized in the heads of these people, fit targets for their shilalahs. Already, too, are their associations formed in avowed hostility to the Chinese. In all this there is, of course, nothing strange. Repugnance to the presence and influence of foreigners is an ancient feeling among men. It is peculiar to no particular race or nation. It is met with, not only in the conduct of one nation towards another, but in the conduct of the inhabitants of the different parts of the same country, some times of the same city, and even of the same village..."

"“Am I…Are you…Please, is this Heaven or Hell?” The old lady and the bowler-hatted man both laughed. His laugh sounded like steam escaping, but hers was throaty and loud, like a much younger, much larger woman. “Opinions differ,” the old lady said. “We think of it simply as California.”"

"This was in January, and we’d just had nearly a month of rain, fog, and wet chill. Then California did what it does several times every winter and for which I always forgive it anything. The rain stopped, the sun came out, the sky turned an unclouded blue, and the temperature went up into the high seventies. Everything was lush from the winter rains and there was no way to distinguish those three or four days from summer, and I walked into town in shirtsleeves."

"A Christian baker is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to end California’s attempts to force her to violate her deeply held religious beliefs. In her petition filed with the high court on Wednesday, Golden State resident Cathy Miller requested that the justices take up her case and issue a ruling in defense of her First Amendment rights. (At least four justices must agree to hear a case before it can be considered by the full court.) “All I want is to serve my neighbors as the Gospel of Jesus Christ calls me to without being forced to create messages that violate my beliefs,” Miller said in a statement."

"I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste."

"California's hyperdevelopment since the Gold Rush came at the greatest cost to California Indians. The state's prolific growth was built upon a tradition of ethnic cleansing that has been largely hidden from the public."

"Consider California. Its wealth was initially built on gold mines. But today it is built on silicon and celluloid - Silicon Valley and the celluloid hills of Hollywood."