Quotes About Los Angeles

The weekend of September 28, Manny Barraza came up to Los Angeles with an agreement by which Richard would assign all the rights of his story to his sister Ruth. The district attorney's office repeatedly said it would not allow Ramirez to use funds from any sales of his story; such money, they said, would go to the victims. Nevertheless, Richard signed the agreement.

That first year in L.A., Richard became addicted to cocaine. It was 1978, and coke was the "in" drug, selling for $100 per gram. This was prior to the Colombian cartels applying modern corporate techniques to the importation and distribution of cocaine in the States, which brought the price of a gram down to thirty-five dollars by the mid-eighties.

Richard had a plan to make some quick money: he could buy pot in El Paso for next to nothing and sell it in Los Angeles for considerably more. Without telling anyone, Richard left El Paso for good on a dirty, battered Greyhound bus. He'd just turned eighteen. Richard listened to heavy metal music over earphones and slept when possible.

I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody'. I typed up a segment of taped conversation with Neal Cassady, or Cody, talking about his early adventures in L.A. It's four chapters.

Why can I cook for tourists that come and visit L.A. and are so excited to see the Kogi truck? Because I cooked at country clubs and Embassy Suites hotels.

There were the phone calls and Elvis had asked me to visit him in Los Angeles. This was in 1962.

I'm not sure whether Los Angeles borders on the ocean or on oblivion. I always feel that I'm two steps away from the other side when I'm out there. It's more like a vacation place or a place to visit than a place to hunker down.

I like to visit L.A., but I wouldn't want to live there.

I don't love L.A. It's a great place to visit; it's a great place to meet and work, but I don't want to live there.

The first time I ever visited L.A., I wanted to move here. It's the land of opportunity.

You would think with me living in Los Angeles I would go to the beach all the time, but we don't. It's the same as visiting the Statue of Liberty. If you don't live in N.Y.C., it's the first stop on your family vacation, but if you live there, you only go if you have relatives visiting from out of town!

In 1983, I was working at an art gallery in Los Angeles and going to film school at Los Angeles City College. At that time, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a young painter and was visiting L.A. for his first show at the Larry Gagosian Gallery.

The first time I met my father was when I was 25. I was visiting here in Los Angeles, I had not moved here yet. And he came down to meet me. It wasn't emotional, it was like meeting a stranger.

The global phenomenon of poverty tourism - or 'poorism' - has become increasingly popular during the past few years. Tourists pay to be guided through the favelas of Brazil and the shantytowns of South Africa. The recently opened Los Angeles Gang Tour carries visitors through battle-scarred territories of urban violence and deprivation.

I moved out to Los Angeles with the idea of becoming a director, which thousands, if not tens and hundreds of thousands, of people do, every year. It's a very competitive field, of course. I immediately got swept away into the visual side of things, starting with visual effects, and then designing.

Los Angeles doesn't have as vital a theatre as New York does. And that's something that really interests me.

I remember where I was when I first heard 'Boyz N The Hood' - 126th Street and Normandy, South Central, Los Angeles. I remember that I was on my porch. What they described in that song was so vivid and so clear to me because it was the kind of life I was used to witnessing and partly experiencing in my neighborhood.

The first time I performed at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, I was in the back of the room doing vocal exercises. 'Me-me-me, my-my-my, mo-mo-mo.' And I'm looking around, and no one else is doing it. I'm like, 'They must have done it before they came to the club.' I came to realize that I was an idiot.

I like 'Goodbye My Lover' because it's a really personal song and I recorded it in my landlady's bathroom in Los Angeles. She had a piano in there and for me listening back to it, it actually sounds like the voice I hear in my head. It's so close to what I can imagine.

I never had intention of coming to New York or L.A. and actually doing more than scraping by - you know, doing plays. And as my career sort of progressed of its own volition, I did come to New York.

It's a very enticing, very seductive place, but once you get to know what L.A.'s really like, you don't want to live there.

In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.

In Los Angeles, half of all smog from sulfur dioxide comes in from ships.

We shoot double episodes in 15 days in Los Angeles.