Quotes from Eric Garcetti

Don't run for mayor if you don't want to basically be working all the time.

Ninety-five percent of my work is being mayor. But that 5% that nags at all of us - of what's going wrong in this country - I think is best thought out not in your own head but by getting out there, being out there, and listening to Americans.

Mayors in any city are pretty non-partisan people where it's problem solvers.

On things like the minimum wage, where cities as well as states are increasingly looking at income disparity, mayors will have, I think, a very strong voice.

I lived in Burma for a couple of summers in the '90s, working with the democratic resistance that had fled to the jungles.

People elect me to make sure the chief of police is the right chief of police. They elect me to make sure I have the right person running the airport.

I'm not one of those politicians, to my probably discredit, who thinks very far ahead. It has to feel right to me and not be about a careful plot and plan.

I always thought Grover Cleveland was from Cleveland.

Pete Buttigieg is one of my closest friends as a mayor.

I have an incredible compass. You can put me back in a country I haven't been in 20 years and say, 'Get me from point A to point B,' and I'll take you there.

Campaigns are these moments of suspended animation where people usually learn how to be friends afterward.

There are two rules in politics. They say never ever be pictured with a drink in your hand, and never swear.

I don't want to bring a European city or an east-coast city to the West Coast.

Mayors are really good at dealing with things practically.

When President Trump got out of the Paris climate accords, we got 412 cities to say we will do it instead, because we're on the front line with our firefighters dealing with historic fires and floods.

I agree with President Trump that we need good jobs in this country, but let's get to that business rather than the distractions of repealing Obamacare or raiding communities and taking otherwise law-abiding, contributing citizens away from their families.

The classic rules of American politics are dying, if not dead, if you look at the last two presidential elections. An African-American could never be president until one was; a TV reality star couldn't become president until one was.

In presidential elections, I think people focus way too much on ideology.

I've worked closely with presidents, especially with President Obama, and I realized that what good leaders do at the national level is no different than what we do at the local level.

I don't think you can lead a nation if you don't have a definition of the nation. We have to define, as Democrats, what a nation is and embrace the entire nation.

I prioritize my daughter and my wife.

The Olympics have been an amazing part of Los Angeles' history. In many ways in 1932, they put us on the map when people didn't even know where Los Angeles was. In 1984, they were the first profitable Olympics of the modern era.

I'm progressive, and I'm practical.

The White House is not where power comes from in this country. The cities and the local communities of this nation are prepared to save Washington - and not vice versa.