City of Angels Quotes

“We lived in a me-first world obsessed with morally inconsequential celebrities of dubious motivations and shallow character. How or why these people had become famous, or why they would be emulated and their every word newsworthy, no one of common sense could explain. The world had seemingly gone mad, and anyone pointing this out was reviled and mocked.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels

“It was after midnight by a mile when I slid off the bar stool at O’Malley’s and began to walk home. O’Malley’s is an old Irish pub and though I wasn’t Irish, nor did I drink like a lot of other newspaper reporters I knew, I stopped by for a Coke nearly every evening. I liked listening to other reporters — and cops, who also frequented O’Malley’s — shoot the breeze and relate old stories that hadn’t been completely true the first time they’d been told.

O’Malley’s was just somewhere to go which made every guy sipping a beer or doing shots feel a little less alone in a city like Los Angeles. Some of them still had wives, but you could tell they were lonely. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been hanging around a bar at that hour; they’d have been finding solace in soft flesh and perfume. Maybe their wives would have been finding some solace too, and more of them would have stayed married. Most of those guys, cops and reporters alike, were working on their second or third marriage. I didn’t think they were working hard enough, but maybe that was because I didn’t have anyone to go home to.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels

“I turned my head and saw the big lamps, and I knew it was Violet Atwater. When I turned back around Mack had slowed because of the fog. Through the mist I couldn’t see Greyson Manor any longer. Violet almost caught up to us in her big Packard and then she was enveloped in the fog as well. It was the change in the air I noticed first. Fresh and clean, with something sweet like honeysuckle or jasmine drifting on the evening breeze. Mack smelled it too, because he sniffed and glanced over at me.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels

“Mrs. Atwater will see you now.” She spoke in a tone which conveyed her disappointment, but her smirk indicated the pleasure she’d derived from startling me. We stood there a second or two before I realized she wasn’t going to walk me down to Mrs. Atwater’s office. I said, “Don’t ever let the world dampen that bubbly personality of yours, Ellen, it’s what makes you so attractive.” I didn’t look back as I ambled toward the office but I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck; no doubt thinking about untraceable poisons and such, and long needles.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels

“It was such a beautiful sentiment, so pure in its innocence, so uncaring of the vulnerableness. A great love for Sarah swept over me for which, if pressed, I would never have been able to justify. But maybe that’s how love should be. Perhaps love is a magic between two people which should never be questioned, whether it happens in a heartbeat, or over time. Because to question it is to destroy its magic.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels

“That made her smile. She said in a rush, as though she’d been wanting to say it, “It’s funny how lonely you can be when you’re with a lot of people, isn’t it? And how lonely you can be when you’re all alone. Yet when it’s just one nice person, someone with whom you instantly feel like you’ve known forever, you’re not lonely anymore, because you’re two.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels

“I liked the beat, too — Hollywood and the City of Angels. It had been a long time since any angels had appeared here, but enough of the old buildings and old stars still hung around to remind you of what she’d been once, in a world far, far away.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels

“I took my time driving back to the warehouse to drop off the van. It would be the loneliest ten blocks I’d ever walked once I did, because I’d met Nancy. It is one thing to be lonely and ache for someone to care for, someone to love in the abstract. It is quite another to know who that someone is and discover she is just out of reach. No love is as far away as one just beyond reach. I drove with an aching heart through the city as it sprung to life only hours before Christmas.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels

“My little twenty-year-old thirteen-inch black-and-white TV had quit working a couple of months ago. I wouldn’t be able to watch Jimmy Stewart discover it was a wonderful life for the millionth time on Christmas Day, not this year. I tried to concentrate on crime in Isola, but kept thinking about those tips; planning how I’d spend the dough. I’d stock up on food first, can goods and package stuff I could heat up on my hotplate. And cases of Top Ramen for those lean times. Maybe I’d splurge on some cookies and a few snacks. A man needed something to look forward to in this dreary world. Heck, if I really made out like a bandit, maybe I could hold back a twenty so I could take a girl out to lunch. Maybe I’d even take her to the movies. Of course I’d have to find the girl, first.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels

“Now people nowadays, especially the younger ones, they don’t have an ounce of romance in their soul. It’s all zombies and video games, shallow celebrities. They love insta-sex but make fun of what they call insta-love. They get a few minutes pleasure out of the foolin’ around, but don’t have the depth of heart to fall in love like a romantic will, so they scoff at it. Real love is like that sometimes.”
― Bobby Underwood, City of Angels