I have a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles. It’s my hometown, my family still lives there, and I visit often, but I seldom feel a sense of “home” there. Los Angeles happened to be on my mind today, so I thought I’d share my 25 favorite quotes about the city — it’s all the glory and disgrace of the City of Angels from 25 different lenses.

1) I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life. LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets godawful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle. –Jack Kerouac

2) Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city. –Dorothy Parker

3) I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic. –Andy Warhol

4) Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles. –Frank Lloyd Wright

5) Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang’s feeble imagination. –Henry Miller

6) If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture – not only national culture but global culture. –Barbara Kruger

7) Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really droppped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically — any way you want to look at it — everbody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case. –Michael Connelly

8) I do love America. And LA is a very short commute to America its like half an hour on the plane. –Craig Ferguson

9) One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It’s not like if you’re in Los Angeles, where everyone’s so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you’re down, they shun you. Also, all that sunshine is a cruel joke when you’re depressed. In New York, even in your misery, you feel like you belong. –Mindy Kaling

10) When its 100 degrees in New York, it’s 72 in Los Angeles. When its 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it’s still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and only 72 in Los Angeles. –Neil Simon

11) Los Angeles has no seasons, so it’s kind of hard to keep track of time here. The lines between spring, summer, fall, and winter all blur like my vision. I get stuck on repeat for different measures of eternity. –Kris Kudd

12) Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic. –Norman Mailer

13) People cut themselves off from their ties of the old life when they come to Los Angeles. They are looking for a place where they can be free, where they can do things they couldn’t do anywhere else. –Tom Bradley

14) In Los Angeles, everyone is a star. –Denzel Washington

15) I love Los Angeles. It reinvents itself every 2 days. –Billy Connolly

16) Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees. –David Letterman

17) Los Angeles is a microcosm of the United States. If L.A. falls, the country falls. –Ice T

18) Los Angeles…I mean, who would want to live in a place where the only cultural advantage is that you can turn right on a red light? –Woody Allen

19) Los Angeles makes the rest of California seem authentic. –Jonathan Culler

20) The final story, the final chapter of western man, I believe, lies in Los Angeles. –Phil Ochs

21) In Los Angeles, people dress with the deep and earnest hope that people will do nothing but stare at them. –Ellie Kemper

22) So I live in Los Angeles, and it’s kind of a goofy place. They have an airport named after John Wayne. That ought to explain it. It has a charming kind of superstitious innocence. –George Carlin

23) In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is. –Simon Hoggart

24) In Los Angeles, by the time you’re 35, you’re older than most of the buildings. –Delia Ephron

25) On thinking about Hell, I gather my brother Shelley found it was a place much like the city of London. I, who live in Los Angeles and not in London find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be still more like Los Angeles. –Bertolt Brecht

For more wanderlust and life inspiration, check out: 25 Favorite Quotes About Paris | A Collection of 65 Inspiring Travel Quotes | 50 Favorite Quotes About Women | Around the World in 52 Proverbs | 25 Favorite Quotes About London