Southern California Quotes

“To own an orange grove in Southern California is to live on the real gold coast of American agriculture.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“I think of the view from a favorite arroyo in the late afternoon, the east slope still bathed in sunlight, the far slope already full of dark shade and lengthening shadows. A cool breeze, as one can look across the plains, out over miles of homes and trees, and hear the faraway hum of traffic on the high-ways and see the golden light filtering through the mist-laden air.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“A Terrestrial Paradise, an Amazon Island, abounding in gold and certainly 'infested with many griffins.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“It is worth noting that the writers who have most vividly captured the feel of the California landscape have been native sons, like John Steinbeck, or long residents like Robinson Jeffers.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“The citrus-belt communities are also made up of outsiders, but, not having been periodically inundated by new migrants, they have managed to retain a degree of homogeneity and compactness.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“Towns do not develop here,' wrote Sarah Comstock, 'they are instantly created, synthetic communities of a strangely artificial world.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“Imagination," writes Frank Fenton, 'had run around this city like an artistic child. Somewhere it showed a pure and lovely talent. Somewhere it was crude and humorously grotesque.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“Who was it that said the life of an irrigated civilization was about 400 years?”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“The idea, so current in our time, that Southern California is peopled by idlers, oldsters, playboys, and crackpots.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“In all the citrus-belt towns . . . orthodox Protestantism is deeply rooted among the older residents, a pious and conservative lot.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“The citrus belt . . . has three dominant symbols: the church, the orange, and the 'no-trespass' signs.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“The children of the grove owners, oppressed by the placidity of . . . Redlands, have begun to leave the area.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“Wherever citrus production dominates, a rather distinctive social life has long existed. This citrus belt complex of peoples, institutions, and relationships has no parallel in rural life in America. It is neither town nor country, neither rural nor urban. It is a world of its own.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“Still higher, and usually in the form of a dark-green horseshoe curve around the rim of the valley, is the orange belt.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“There is something disturbing about this corner of America, a sinister suggestion of transience. There is a quality, hostile to men in the very earth and air here.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“By some chemistry of her own, California was triumphantly blending the races in to a single type.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“Nearly every special emigrant train carried a clergyman who conducted Sunday services.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“On entering Southern California, the excursion trains made special stops to permit the tourists to visit Smiley Heights in Redlands, to lunch at the Mission Inn.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“Successful agricultural colonies existed in San Bernardino, colonized by the Mormons.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“Los Angeles has always been a boom town, chronically unable to . . . integrate its new population.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“Some seem to regard existence here as camping out, and never make a real home, living in their trunks for years. Even those that have homes are making changes all the time, trading one for another, or building afresh. yes, really, it's almost like living in a big tent, with houses instead of tents.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“At Redlands, in the heart of the citrus belt, night raiders broke into the Chinese camps. Chinese were robbed in the streets of Redlands, driven from their Chinatown, and unmercifully harassed. A mass meeting was called to protest further lawlessness. . . . On September 3 [1893] anti-Chinese raiders converged on the Chinatown in Redlands, broke into the houses, set fire to several buildings, and looted the tills of Chinese merchants. By the turn of the century, virtually all of the Chinese had been driven from the citrus belt.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

“All of these cities and towns are, in a sense, suburbs of Los Angeles. . . . dominated by Los Angeles.”
― Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land