If the Pilgrims had landed in Santa Monica Bay rather than Boston, we'd have six states out here!

It's highly competitive to be here. People don't come to California to drop out anymore. It's a very striving place.

A city where everyone seemed to live in a bungalow on a broad avenue lined with palm, pepper or eucalyptus trees, where there was never any snow.

I don't reverberate to victimhood, probably because of my own life. I refused to become a victim myself, so it's not one of my big stories.

I like narrative, and I ultimately am in love with the men and women I write about, most of them.

In our public life, California is on the verge of being a failed state, and no state has failed in the history of this country.

The Irish didn't read and write for a couple of thousand years, and I think we developed good memories and recall. We have a sense of the revelatory detail. I look for them.

The first key to leadership is self-control.

Put down that map and get wonderfully lost.

The silence leans forward.

The strong spirit empowers others to be stronger souls.

Rilke said that art can come only out of inner necessity. I write because I must. Or because I cannot not write.

America remains the one indispensable nation. And the world needs a strong America.

Money doesn't exist because I don't recognize it.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

Why do you need to do a fancy cartwheel for before you hit him? It just looks stupid.

don’t mistake a new place for a new you.