Walter Kirn Quotes

There ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about.

Chicago is seriously my favorite city in the country. People have roots here, which is nice. When you go to Los Angeles, no one is actually from Los Angeles.

I'm a native of L.A. I've seen the city change and develop over time, and I still believe there's no place like home.

I love Los Angeles. I love when people make fun of it. I think, 'Good, don't come.' All the jokes about it feel out of date.

I spend a lot of time in Los Angeles, but I probably wouldn't say it's my favorite city.

I miss family and friends, and I'd like to get back to work more in Scotland, and do more things like theatre and 'Red Road.' But over here you have the beach and the mountains and the climate. A lot of people diss L.A. as being all tinsel town, fake this and fake that, but a place is only as good as the people you know.

I am well aware that the writers of New York, London, and Toronto are more readily noticed, though the shadowy and potent Ozarks Literary Cabal does what it can for me, then nightly joins me for dinner and calls me 'honey.'

Just as London is not one endless afternoon tea, L.A. isn't all super-fit, health food-crazy freaks.

L.A. has been a great place to dip into, but I'll always come back to London.

Love of place is one of the characteristics I enjoy most about novelists.

New York reminds me a little bit of Canada and my upbringing. Los Angeles is like living in a vacation, and you have to pinch yourself every once and a while.

When my parents were like, 'We're going to the Northwest,' I thought, 'You've gotta be kidding me.' I was so depressed. The cold weather really did not agree with me. When I moved back down to L.A. at 16, I felt like it was home - it was where I belonged.

I get very attached to places.

I love L.A. I fall more in love with it as I get older.

L.A. will never, ever, ever, ever be my town. It'll never be my town. It's not New York.

I've always seen places as being very deeply connected to the experience that people have in those places. I think that probably comes through very much in my books.

I love L.A. I'm such an L.A. person.

I'd do whatever it takes to stay in California; maybe not L.A. because it's so crazy.

Books set in Brooklyn and L.A. are often about people who are rootless, who want to go somewhere else. In the Midwest, though, the stories are about people who want to stay where they are - who like where they are.

As a writer, when you fall in love with a place, you want to spend more time in it, either physically or mentally, and so you write about it.

I've actually enjoyed my time in L.A. more than a New Yorker is supposed to.

I don't feel like a Londoner.

If you look at my characters as a group, they all have a different relationship with the way that places can signify emotion in them - and the way those bonds can be shattered.

Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.

Only if you're from L.A. do you know Elysian Park.