"There was an empty swimming pool nearby. It must've been February. Italian cypresses rose up in inviting cones; the scalloped houses dropped off in stages beneath us and eventually the whole thing flattened out into that ash-colored plane, that grand and gray infinity that is Los Angeles from the hills: God's palm, checkered with twinkling lights and crossed with hot wind...
People blame Los Angeles for so many things, but my own view is tender, forgiving. I love L.A. with all of my heart. This story I have to tell doesn't have much to do with me, but it isn't about some bored actress and her existential crises, a troubled screenwriter who comes to his senses and hightails it back to Illinois. It's not about the vacuous horror of the California dream. It's something that could've happened anywhere else in the world, but instead settled, inexplicably, here. This city, with its unfortunate rap. It deserves warmer witness than dear old Joan Didion."
— Matthew Specktor, American Dream Machine
"Mere flim-flam stories, and nothing but shams and lies." — Miguel de Cervantes... More
"The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not." — Gertrude Stein... More
"There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education." — Will Rogers... More
"There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them.... More
"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it." — F... More
"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." — Frank Zappa... More
