L.A. is a great city to get lost in. The best thing to do is to drive in any direction, find a strip mall, and go from one store to the next. I guarantee you will see a collision of cultures you never imagined.
— Eric Garcetti
I want to turn momentum on traffic. I want to make in a dent in homelessness on the way to eradicating it on our streets. But there's always something else to do tomorrow. And you have to be at peace knowing you're not going to finish it all.
In Washington, you have imaginary problems, and they can't even solve the imaginary problems.
The Olympics have been an amazing part of Los Angeles' history. In many ways in 1932, they put us on the map when people didn't even know where Los Angeles was. In 1984, they were the first profitable Olympics of the modern era.
I'm very much a California boy. I try to eat healthy and exercise.
No sane person would run for president, right?
If I hear that Quito, Ecuador, is doing something to have a whole area of town that's zero emissions, and we're thinking about that in Los Angeles' downtown, I'm like, 'I better catch up.'
I've always said we need to build resilience locally.
The classic rules of American politics are dying, if not dead, if you look at the last two presidential elections. An African-American could never be president until one was; a TV reality star couldn't become president until one was.
Don't run for mayor if you don't want to basically be working all the time.
I don't want to bring a European city or an east-coast city to the West Coast.
I am a passionate, committed composer, and the guy I used to write musicals with, once he was able to ditch me and get a better composer, actually won the Tony.
In presidential elections, I think people focus way too much on ideology.
We need a pro-worker trade approach that puts American jobs - not corporate profits - front and center.
I prioritize my daughter and my wife.
I've worked closely with presidents, especially with President Obama, and I realized that what good leaders do at the national level is no different than what we do at the local level.
If you want to cut crime, if you want to end homelessness, you have to deal with sexual violence, sexual harassment, and domestic violence.
I have an incredible compass. You can put me back in a country I haven't been in 20 years and say, 'Get me from point A to point B,' and I'll take you there.
Ninety-five percent of my work is being mayor. But that 5% that nags at all of us - of what's going wrong in this country - I think is best thought out not in your own head but by getting out there, being out there, and listening to Americans.
The travel that I've spent around the country, I always come back with ideas for L.A. and vice versa: My experiences in L.A. give me an immediacy to issues that sometimes people in Washington think about but aren't experiencing every day.
I agree with President Trump that we need good jobs in this country, but let's get to that business rather than the distractions of repealing Obamacare or raiding communities and taking otherwise law-abiding, contributing citizens away from their families.
I'm the grandson of immigrants who came across rivers and oceans to get here, some without documentation.
You don't have to be Latino to speak powerfully about how important it is to have a police department that cares for our immigrant communities.
Mayors are accountable. Local governments are accountable.
I'm progressive, and I'm practical.
I think connected to poverty is the trauma of poverty. It's not just a material thing; it's a psychological thing that we have no mental health system in this country.
I don't spend much time on the computer at all, so I do most of my email on my phone if I do any at all.
People will give you the responsibility, even the authority, to go after the big things, the visionary things, the reaching for incredible opportunities, if they trust that you're running a city well. And if you don't run a city well, conversely, you can't do the big things.
Pete Buttigieg is one of my closest friends as a mayor.
Environment, homelessness, infrastructure and immigration - I'm very focused on all four, which are critical to the success of Los Angeles.
As mayor, I've traveled to China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Mexico to meet with heads of state and business leaders to promote trade with L.A. companies and through L.A.'s seaports and airports - because that generates L.A. jobs.
I think I bring a perspective that local communities are what make this country great, and they are the laboratories of democracy.
I'm a typical mutt American. I have an Italian last name. Half-Mexican, half-Jewish.
When it comes to public safety, I listen to police chiefs and cops, not to a cable-news station.
I lived in Burma for a couple of summers in the '90s, working with the democratic resistance that had fled to the jungles.
I think everyone has the impression that L.A. is Hollywood and fast lives. That couldn't be further from the truth.
There are two Americas: Washington and the rest of us.
If a sanctuary city means that our police department does not enforce federal immigration laws, then we are one. But declaring yourself a 'sanctuary city' also signals to a lot of people that you are protecting hard-core criminals, which I don't, and I don't believe in.
You have to listen to your own heart.
Most people will be primarily getting into autonomous vehicles if we look 20, 30 years out. If we mandate that autonomous vehicles have to be electric, then we will move people into electric vehicles.
It sure would be nice to have a Washington that was there for us, but most help has always been local and regional.
The White House is not where power comes from in this country. The cities and the local communities of this nation are prepared to save Washington - and not vice versa.
I think, for me, the biggest issue is poverty in general, poverty in this time of plenty. It's reflected in homelessness. It's reflected in educational gaps. It's reflected in racial disparities.
The cost of housing in L.A. has increased dramatically because more people want to live here. They come to Los Angeles every day, not just from around the United States but from around the world.
On my mom's side, the Jewish side of the family, I come from a family of musicians who are pianists, so I've always loved cultural expression.
Cory Booker I've known since 1993. We used to be part of the L'Chaim Society at Oxford University together.
Aggressive government spending during the Great Recession was absolutely necessary.
The fact is, there are far more customers for American products outside of the U.S. than there are here at home. With open markets and a level playing field, American workers can out-compete workers anywhere in the world.
I'm in what feels like a pretty transparent fishbowl as mayor. People see you at the market, people see you at the diner, people see you wherever you are, talk to you. You don't shave, they're taking selfies of you. You come back from your jog, they're talking to you.
Mayors are really good at dealing with things practically.
