Northern California Quotes

So at my old school," he said. "There was this kid on the baseball team. People thought, I don't know. They saw that he went to some website or something." ... "They made it impossible for him to play. Every day, the found another way to mess with him. Then one Friday after school, they locked him in the storage closet." He winced, as if remembering and I knew. I knew then. "All night long and the whole next day. A tiny, dark, disgusting airless space. His parents thought he was at the away game and someone told the coaches he was sick, so no one even looked for him. No one knew he was trapped in there." His chest was heaving and I was remembering how he told me he didn't used to have claustrophobia and now he did. "He was really good too, probably the best player on the team or could have been. And he didn't even do anything. The guy just went to these sites and someone saw. Do you get it? Do you get what it would mean for me? The assistant captain? I want to be captain next year so maybe I can graduate early. No scholarship. No nothing. These guys aren't" - he made finger quotes - "evolved. They're not from Northern California. They don't do all-day sits or draw pictures." The dagger went straight in. "It's brutal in a locker room. ~ Jandy Nelson

I always tell people I romanticize about doing something simple, like doing radio in northern California. ~ Craig Kilborn

I grew up in northern California, where it was consistently in the hundreds in the summertime. My dad didn't think he should have to turn on the air conditioning when we had a swimming pool in our backyard; it was our built-in air conditioner. ~ Summer Sanders

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. ~ Baz Luhrmann

He missed the Midwest ... Northern California was impractically beautiful. Everywhere you looked there were trees and streams, waterfalls, mountains, the ocean ... There was nowhere to look just to look, just to think. ~ Rainbow Rowell

For years I drove a big Ford F250 pickup. That was my ride because two-thirds of my work was wood work, and I'm always driving up to Northern California, where I harvest salvaged trees. ~ Nick Offerman

I think California has some very good looking women ... I know Stephanie Seymour is from San Diego, and I know Josie Maran - who's my very good friend - she's from Northern California. So I think California produces some good looking women, for sure. ~ Marisa Miller

I think Northern California is the most beautiful place on earth. And I adore New Orleans, but there's something about the air in SF, for instance. It changes from moment to moment, like one's thoughts. ~ Hilton Als

Today, the Power Elite is more geographically concentrated in specific areas. Economist Jamie Galbraith found that if you measured inequality across counties in the United States in the 1990s, half the rise occurred in 5 counties out of 3,150: New York, New York; King County, Washington; and San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Mateo in Northern California.24 ~ Christopher L. Hayes

I like loud music. I like music that fills my ears. I'm just going to pull out my iPod and see what we got here. We're always interested in new bands because we have a retail store in northern California. I think it's got to be happy. ~ Tyler Florence

Los Angeles in 1912 was a sprawling flatland stretching between the ocean and the mountains. Within a thirty-five-mile radius, there were forty incorporated towns, and it was close to impossible to know where one ended and another began. While the southern California land boom of the 1880s had not brought the number of people who swarmed northern California in the Gold Rush, it had induced a variety of characters to seek out the sun and a new life. Families determined to create their own little utopias bought several hundred or thousands of acres at a time, primarily from the Spanish land grants that still dominated the area, infusing the new communities with their Midwestern values. ~ Cari Beauchamp

My grandmother was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, my daughter was a teacher and is now a superintendent in northern California, and my son-in-law is a high school principal. I am surrounded. ~ Loni Anderson

But I can say just as surely that this minute, in a northern-California valley, I can taste-smell-hear-see and feel between my teeth the potato chips I ate slowly one November afternoon in 1936, in the bar of the Lausanne Palace. They were uneven in both thickness and color, probably made by a new apprentice in the hotel kitchen, and almost surely they smelled faintly of either chicken or fish, for that was always the case there. They were a little too salty, to encourage me to drink. They were ineffable. I am still nourished by them. That is probably why I can be so firm about not eating my way through barrels, tunnels, mountains more of them here in the land where they hang like square cellophane fruit on wire trees in all grocery stores, to tempt me sharply every time I pass them. ~ Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

I grew up in northern California in a town called Fairfield, which is kind of exactly between San Francisco and Sacramento, a small suburb. And I'm the youngest of five children. ~ Tracy K. Smith

the weather in northern california is like your body at 16, you just don't feel it. ~ Valerie Schrag

Hating L.A. was in my Northern California DNA. We even had a burl plaque that hung on our living room wall that read, "We Don't Give a Damn How it's Done in L.A. ~ Antonia Crane

I recalled something I'd read a long time ago about Satan. When he appeared, it wouldn't be as a demon but as an ordinary-looking guy with a convincing message of peace. ~ Steven Ramirez

I continue to be a photographer; I have enjoyed fishing and hunting with a close friend; and have owned two ranches, first in northern California and then in the state of Washington. ~ Douglass North

A lot of the people in Northern California and parts of Oregon have decided that we are not on the same page as San Francisco and Portland and Los Angeles. I don't know if six states is a solution because is Washington, D.C. and the rest of the country really going to give California 10 new senators? ~ Doug LaMalfa

First and foremost I am a chef, whether behind the stove at one of my Northern California restaurants or for the past 15 years in front of the camera on my Food Network cooking shows. Creating new dishes and flavor combinations that bring cooks and our restaurant guests pleasure is my job and I love it. ~ Tyler Florence

I'm not really a Hollywood person. Not that I don't like L.A., but I'm just a Northern California guy. ~ Clint Eastwood

I made a decision to live outside the city in northern California. My agent said to me, 'Kid, you're going to make a mint in television movies.' He positioned me, and we picked really good projects, and I cornered that market. They were 20-day projects. ~ Mare Winningham

Mulholland Drive is a two-lane, serpentine road that runs along the crest of the mountains and is named after the guy who built a two-hundred-mile aqueduct to drain water from the Northern California delta down to Los Angeles just so developers could get rich building homes in a place that otherwise is inhospitable to human life. The whole city is a carefully ~ Lee Goldberg

As I got into my teens, I started reading better books, beginning with the Beats and then the hippie writers, people like Wallace Stegner up in Northern California, and all the political New Journalism stuff, the Boys on the Bus dudes and Ken Kesey. ~ Stephen Gaghan

I was a tall, sandy-blond Northern California kid. Tommy, meanwhile, appeared to have been grown somewhere dark and moist. ~ Greg Sestero

I live on the beautiful Northern California coast. I have always loved hiking, whale watching and being outdoors. ~ Christine Feehan

Lonely as God, and white as a winter moon, Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary from the heart of the great black forests of Northern California ~ Joaquin Miller

A country that has yielded a billion and a half of gold is, perforce, well and favorably known to the uttermost parts of the earth. Though the stream of yellow wealth diminishes, or even ceases to flow, yet the channel is carved through which the thoughts of men longingly roll. Upon such a land no limit of impossibility is placed. ~ Frank Lewis Nason

She's not just a nanny.
She's Aurora.
She's my reckoning and saviour all at once.
She's her namesake, those northern lights that brighten the darkest winter skies.
She's my homecoming.
And I'm in love with her. ~ Karina Halle

I'm a California girl, and I'd love to restore a sense of place to Southern California. ~ Rene Russo

So it was flawed in that it didn't require California to have a first claim on the power plants. It deregulated part of the market, but not all of the market. ~ Gray Davis

My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally. ~ Seamus Heaney

I arrived in New York in 1986, when I was 28. The market here was nothing. In the Union Square farmers' market, it was a couple of potatoes, everything from California. So the only place I was comfortable shopping was in Chinatown, because it all came from Hong Kong. ~ Jean-Georges Vongerichten

California lacks a lot of the rules and restrictions the East has. Every house is a different style, different material, different color. There's a lot of craziness out there. ~ Parker Stevenson

Ossa, Bronwen would learn his name later, had tried to communicate with her, first in Tretorian, then Common--the language shared by most Cordisians--and he even attempted a few phrases from the Northern language, Eirrannian. She had not been scared, nor did she appear much bothered by her injuries. Calm and clear-eyed, Bronwen had stood, leading the men to believe her to be half-witted or dazed from her pain. After his attempts to get the child to ~ Cat Bruno

Our northern brethren buried their dead, were skilled toolmakers, kept fires going, and took care of the infirm just like early humans. The fossil record shows survival into adulthood of individuals afflicted with dwarfism, paralysis of the limbs, or the inability to chew. Going by exotic names such as Shanidar I, Romito 2, the Windover Boy, and the Old Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, our ancestors supported individuals who contributed little to society. Survival of the weak, the handicapped, the mentally retarded, and others who posed a burden is seen by paleontologists as a milestone in the evolution of compassion. This communitarian heritage is crucial in relation to this book's theme, since it suggests that morality predates current civilizations and religions by at least a hundred millennia. ~ Frans De Waal

I must confess, I'm not the best cook. I make a mean salsa, as I like hot sauce and, you know, tacos, because I'm a California kid, and that's about it. ~ Sasha Grey

When Dad was a kid, he wanted to be a lumberjack, but unfortunately he'd been cursed with the build of an accountant and the brain of an astrophysicist. These qualities had combined to make him the third-most-visited orthodontist in northern New Jersey. ~ Kieran Scott

No matter where you put me, I don't care if it is North Carolina, Florida, California, New York City; I'm going to be who I am. ~ Chris Paul

Come over early tomorrow morning," Marlboro Man asked over the phone one night. "We're gathering cattle, and I want you to meet my mom and dad."
"Oh, okay," I agreed, wondering to myself why we couldn't just remain in our own isolated, romantic world. And the truth was, I wasn't ready to meet his parents yet. I still hadn't successfully divorced myself from California J's dear, dear folks. They'd been so wonderful to me during my years of dating their son and had become the California version of my parents, my home away from home. I hated that our relationship couldn't continue despite, oh, the minor detail of my breaking up with their son. And already? Another set of parents? I wasn't ready.
"What time do you want me there?" I asked. I'd do anything for Marlboro Man.
"Can you be here around five?" he asked.
"In the evening…right?" I responded, hopeful.
He chuckled. Oh, no. This was going to turn out badly for me. "Um…no," he said. "That would be five A.M."
I sighed. To arrive at his ranch at 5:00 A.M. would mean my rising by 4:00 A.M.--before 4:00 A.M. if I wanted to shower and make myself presentable. This meant it would still be dark outside, which was completely offensive and unacceptable. There's no way. I'd have to tell him no.
"Okay--no problem!" I responded. I clutched my stomach in pain.
Chuckling again, he teased, "I can come pick you up if you need me to. Then you can sleep all the way back to the ranch."
"Are you kiddin ~ Ree Drummond

California is a small woman saying, 'Fuck me.' New York is a large man saying, 'Fuck you! ~ George Carlin

My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen. ~ Dave Brubeck

Judy Garland's father was gay. That seems to be the consensus. They left Minnesota and went to California because he got caught with some boy backstage. ~ Judy Davis

Every gun regulation that President [Barack] Obama has advocated for, California has already. And it didn't stop terrorism. ~ Rand Paul

In California virtually everyone has had their teeth whitened. If they all smiled at once, they would give us a headache. ~ Garrison Keillor

And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set. ~ Ralph Ellison

Prior to the attack on Betio, photo analysts counted the number of privies (benjo) built on short piers extending into the water on both the southern and northern shores. Knowing the maximum number of bottoms per outhouse specified by Japanese naval regulations, they were able to make a surprisingly accurate estimate of the number of defenders. ~ Oscar Gilbert

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest
scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-
loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes -
nor Mississippi's stream:
- This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the
still small voice vibrating - America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen - the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd - sea-board and inland
- Texas to Maine - the Prairie States - Vermont, Virginia,
California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West - the paradox and con-
flict,
The countless snow-flakes falling - (a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:)
the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity - welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
- Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify - while the
heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails. ~ Walt Whitman

When I was signing up for the University of Southern California's music program, I flipped a coin to decide my major. If it came up heads, it would be flute - tails would be voice. ~ Sondra Radvanovsky

Men, once enemies, are now jointly governing in Northern Ireland. And although there have been several hitches, by and large it's working well. ~ Betty Williams

I'd heard a lot of Motown and Stax when I was a kid, but the more well-known end of it. On Jam tours, we had a DJ called Ady Croasdell who ran a '60s club. He turned me on to underground stuff and what people call northern soul. It just blew my mind. ~ Paul Weller

People actually enjoy it when it rains in San Diego because we never get it. It's a nice change of pace. When you live in Southern California, everybody says, 'It's so expensive there.' I tell them, 'It's just a very expensive weather tax.' ~ Steve Finley

Whenever I get a free day, I drive up to some part of California that looks promising on the map. ~ Kent McCord

Well, I haven't really been able to shoot in California for a while. Little movies yeah, but the big movies we can't shoot there. It's just a shame that Arnold Schwarzenegger can't deliver on this level. ~ Joel Silver

Like so many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts
census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway. ~ Thomas Pynchon

We know quite well that the people of the Northern States have not yet drunk of the cup
they are still trying to hold it far from their lips
which all the rest of the world see they nevertheless must drink of. We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made, what is more than either, they have made a nation. ~ William Ewart Gladstone

We're looking forward to a great season at the University of California - if we find a way to put cleats on their sandals. ~ Ronald Reagan

The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It's as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California. ~ John Steinbeck

If I Go, I'm Goin"

This house
She's holding secrets
I got my change behind the bed

In a coffee can
I throw my nickels in
Just in case I have to leave

And I will go if you ask me to
I will stay if you dare
And if I go I'm goin shameless
I'll let my hunger take me there

This house
She's quite the talker
She creeks and moans
She keeps me up

And the photographs
Know I'm a liar
They just laugh as I burn her down

And I will go if you ask me to
I will stay if you dare
And if I go I'm goin on fire
Let my anger take me there

The shingles man they're shaking
The back door's burning through
This old house she's quite the keeper
Quite the keeper of you

I will go if you ask me to
I will stay if you dare
And if I go, I'm goin crazy
I'll let my darlin take me there
If I go, I'm goin crazy
I'll let my darlin take me there

This Empty Northern Hemisphere (2009) ~ Gregory Alan Isakov

For the first time American astronauts on the International Space Station ate vegetables grown in space. In other words, even space is getting more rain than California. ~ Conan O'Brien

California is a queer place in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I think the best restaurants in America should be in California. ~ David Chang

In California, up to 15 percent of wells in agricultural areas exceed a federal contaminant threshold, according to studies. ~ Charles Duhigg

IT IS STARTLING to think that all Europe once looked like this Puszcza. To enter it is to realize that most of us were bred to a pale copy of what nature intended. Seeing elders with trunks seven feet wide, or walking through stands of the tallest trees here - gigantic Norway spruce, shaggy as Methuselah - should seem as exotic as the Amazon or Antarctica to someone raised among the comparatively puny, second-growth woodlands found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Instead, what's astonishing is how primally familiar it feels. And, on some cellular level, how complete. ~ Alan Weisman

To ensure that the pigs can't run away, farmers in northern New Guinea slice off a chunk of each pig's nose. This causes severe pain whenever the pig tries to sniff. Since the pigs cannot find food or even find their way around without sniffing, this mutilation makes them completely dependent on their human owners. In another area of New Guinea, it has been customary to gouge out pigs' eyes, so that they cannot even see where they're going.7 ~ Yuval Noah Harari

There have been some good studies done in California with Hispanic parents where in the course of a year, they have changed their entire nutritional intake for the better. The kid becomes, in a sense, the bridge between the educational process and the home. ~ C. Everett Koop

My parents separated before I was 1 year old. I moved in with my aunt and uncle when I was in fourth grade. I was, like, 8 or 9 years old. I was getting in a lot of trouble when I was in Southern California. My older sisters were in gangs. My older brother was in gangs. ~ Troy Polamalu

Educate the Russian or the American or the Englishman or the Irishman or Frenchman or any real northern European except German, and you get the Anarchist, that is to say the man who dreams of order without organisation - of something beyond organisation ... ~ H.G.Wells

When I came back to California in the early '60s I was hanging out with Jimmy Bowen, Phil Spector, and I wanted to be a record producer and work with other artists. ~ Johnny Rivers

I have seen purer liquors, better segars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtesans here in San Francisco than in any other place I have ever visited; and it is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish the best bad things that are available in America. ~ Hinton Helper

I'm a Texas girl, with a California soul. ~ Crystal Woods