101 Gorgeous Quotes About California & Fabulous California Instagram Captions

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure page for more details.

Last Updated on: 19th June 2023, 06:42 pm

Looking for fun or beautiful quotes about California? The state of California, nicknamed the Golden State, has inspired novelists, historians, and travel writers for centuries.

From its stunning coastlines to its pulsing cities, California never ceases to delight. Whether you’re looking for travel inspiration or California Instagram captions, here are my favorite California quotes. 

Read next: 250 Inspirational Travel Quotes & Travel Instagram Captions

Can’t read now? Pin for later!

Quotes about California and California Instagram Captions

My Favorite Travel Booking Sites for 2023

These are my favorite companies that I use on my own travels.

Protect Your Trip via Safety Wing

Find the best city tours, day tours, bus tours, & skip-the-line tickets on GetYourGuide and Viator.

Find the best deals on hotels & vacation rentals on Booking.com.

For English-speaking private airport transfers, book through Welcome Pickups.

For road trips and independent travel, rent a car through Discover Cars.

Find information and cruise reviews on Cruise Critic.

For packing and travel essentials order via Amazon.

Book an affordable family or romantic photography session on your trip through Flytographer (Use the code HISTORYFANGIRL for 10% off your first photoshoot).

For travel guidebooks to have with you during your trip, I always pick one or two from Rick Steves and Lonely Planet.

The Best Quotes about California & California Travel Quotes

Whether you’re headed to beautiful San Diego, renting a car in LA for a Pacific Coast Highway road trip, or spending a long weekend in San Francisco exploring all of the San Fran’s quirky places and nearby hikes, here are my favorite quotes about California, in no particular order…

To capture a California sunset in South Pasadena is to hold an angel’s wings with bated breath. -Ace Antonio Hall

Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries. –Jack Kerouac

You haven’t lived until you’ve died in California. -Mort Sahl

See also
25 Boss Brooklyn Bridge Puns for Perfect Brooklyn Bridge Captions & Statuses

Life in California is beautiful. -Oscar Nunez

If you’ve had good gin on a hot day in Southern California with the people you love, you forget Nebraska. The two things cannot coexist. The stronger, better of the two wins. –Ann Patchett

California

The two girls grew up at the edge of the ocean and knew it was paradise, and better than Eden, which was only a garden. –Eve Babitz

I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air – air you can kiss – and palms. –Jack Keroua

I’ve never been somewhere I belonged, but there are places where I think I could be happy. Like San Francisco. Well, do art museums count? Because I feel like I belong in them. –Heather Demetrios

Everything is just better in California – the wine, the food, fruits and vegetables, the comforts of living. Even the instrumentalists are generous and curious. Everything is wonderful. -Beth Anderson

Let’s go get tacos and sit on the beach. –Nina LaCour

The light was different here in California. –Heidi Freeston

California

If they can’t do it in California, it can’t be done anywhere. -Taylor Caldwell

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California. -Edward Abbey

I believe in that old adage that ‘as goes California, so goes the country.’ -Kamala Harris

It’s the easiest thing in the world to get to California-you just aim yourself west and start walking. –Rae Carson

Santa Barbara is pleasant. It’s heaven, but with a bit more traffic. –Matt Hai

California

Darling, in LA, you decide who you are. Every neighborhood has its own culture and population. Once you find the right one for you, you’re home. Los Angeles is a way of life. –Cara Dee

California is where you get to start over. -Tracy Chevalier

You’re not done with L.A. until L.A. is done with you. –Philip Elliott

It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time. –Jack Kerouac

Things are tough all over, cupcake, an’ it rains on the just an’ the unjust alike…except in California. –Alan Moore

California

Southern California is the land of crazy crimes. –Don Carpenter

Like so many named places in California, it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts–census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway. –Thomas Pynchon

In California gold was what God was in the rest of the country: everything, everywhere. –Claire Vaye Watkins

If California is a state of mind, Hollywood is where you take its temperature. There is a peculiar sense in which this city existing mainly on film and tape is our national capital, alas, and not just the capital of California. It’s the place where our children learn how and what to dream and where everything happens just before, or just after, it happens to us. –Ross Macdonald

Nothing was in walking distance, so the sidewalks stayed empty and clean, free from the discoloration dirty-shoed pedestrians cause. –Buan Boonaca

California

California was almost entirely a dream, a dream vague but deep in the minds of a westering people. –Bernard DeVoto

I know they have palm trees in Southern California. I mean I’m not a complete moron, I’ve watched 90210, and everything. –Meg Cabot

Sailors approaching the coast in a fog can recognize the Santa Barbara Channel by the smell of bitumen which floats on the water. –Caroline C. Leighton

In the US imagination, Southern California is a still-wet canvas where seekers who make their way here can paint whatever picture they like against a backdrop of natural beauty. My California is different. I grew up feeling watched by ghosts. –Adonia E. Lugo

The ocean-bordered southern part of California has always been a place of Hollywood make-believe, casual opulence, suntans and jewelry. -Dan Jenkins

See also
The 18 National Parks in New Mexico: Why & How to Visit Each One!
California

Maybe in San Francisco it wouldn’t feel like the universe was conspiring to keep me in a bubble. –Heather Demetrios

The state of California itself was now just like me – a free-spirited liberal with a mostly sunny disposition teetering on the edge of financial ruin. –Lee Goldberg

Joshua Tree was named by Mormon pioneers- The arms looked like Joshua beckoning them to the promised land. –Diana Hollingsworth Gessler

When California was wild, it was the floweriest part of the continent. -John Muir

When I came to California, it was the mecca of the world. Every young person on the planet wanted to be here. -Joni Mitchell

California

Quotes About Californians and Living in California

There are no real Californians. There are only people who live there and people who don’t. –Laura Kalpakian

When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states. -Will Rogers (As a native Oklahoman, I have to say this one might be my favorite! I mean, you know it’s true).

Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really dropped 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 — everybody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case. –Michael Connelly

Everyone who comes to California brings a little of his own state with him. His own old state, regardless of where or when, is always lurking in the back of his memory for comparison with what he finds here. –Max Miller

I’m a Texas girl, with a California soul. –Crystal Woods

In California the only way to look like you are getting older is to look like you are getting younger…if you can move your forehead over the age of forty, then people become very suspicious. –Matt Haig

Living in California, everyone learns to adapt their actor or actress within. –Courtney Carola

It k**ls me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento. -Joan Didion

See also
7 Reasons Why Visiting New York City Must Be On Your Bucket List

California people are quitters. No offense. It’s just you’ve got restlessness in your blood. –Claire Vaye Watkins

Nature. That’s the one thing that tips the balance in terms of living here in California. Within minutes, I can be in a desert, at the ocean, in a park, and that’s the most nourishing food for my soul. -Lara Pulver

California

For the women in California, they’re just downtrodden because they’re so gorgeous here. Every hot cheerleader comes to California to make it. The men don’t want to get married, they’re lazy lions. Matthew McConaughey is their poster boy so they can procreate and live on the beach in the trailer and have kids and have money and be hedonistic. -Patti Stanger

I’m not really a Hollywood person. Not that I don’t like L.A., but I’m just a Northern California guy. -Clint Eastwood

I am a California girl, born and raised, so flip-flops and cutoff shorts are my go-to look. An easy Angeleno uniform, so to speak…For work, I wear art; in real life, I wear clothes. -Meghan Markle

Well, my thoughts about California are kind of mythological. To me, as well as being a real place, it’s a place where people go to find something – to find happiness or to realize their dreams. So it has that kind of quality of heroism and heartache. -Colin Hay

As a girl, I had zero interest in the stove. I’ve always had a healthy appetite, especially for the wonderful meat and the fresh produce of California, but I was never encouraged to cook and just didn’t see the point in it. -Julia Child

The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion real live here in only the most temporary way. -Joan Didion

California - Los Angeles - Renting a Car in Los Angeles

California Quotes from Songs

California knows how to party -Tupac Shakur “California Love”

 
I’d be safe and warm (I’d be safe and warm)
If I was in L.A. (if I was in L.A.)
California dreamin’ (California dreamin’)
On such a winter’s day -The Mamas and the Papas “California Dreaming”

You could travel the world
But nothing comes close
To the golden coast
Once you party with us
You’ll be falling in love -Katy Perry “California Gurls”

See also
33 Perfect Things to Do on the Olympic Peninsula: Bucket List & Beyond!

All I wanna do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over
Santa Monica Boulevard -Sheryl Crow “All I Wanna Do”

This land is your land, this land is my land, From California to the New York Island. From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me. -Woody Guthrie

 
California - Los Angeles - Renting a Car in Los Angeles
 
There is a city by the sea
A gentle company
I don’t suppose you want to?
And as it tells its sorry tale
In harrowing detail
Its hollowness will haunt you
Its streets and boulevards
Orphans and oligarchs
And here’s a plaintive melody
A truncated symphony.
An ocean’s garbled vomit on the shore:
Los Angeles, I’m yours -The Decemberists “Los Angeles, I’m Yours”
 

Seems it never rains in southern California
Seems I’ve often heard that kind of talk before
It never rains in California, but girl, don’t they warn ya?
It pours, man, it pours -Albert Hammond “It Never Rains in Southern California”

Where they’re out there having fun
In the warm California sun -The Ramones “California Sun”

We’ve been on the run
Driving in the sun
Looking out for number 1
California, here we come
Right back where we started from -Phantom Planet “California”

If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair – Scott McKenzie “If You’re Going to San Francisco”

 
California - Los Angeles - Renting a Car in Los Angeles
 
And if you want these kind of dreams it’s Californication -Red Hot Chili Peppers “Californication”

I’d like to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of California stars
I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of California stars -Wilco “California Stars”

Now let me welcome everybody to the Wild Wild West
A state that’s untouchable like Eliot Ness
The track hits your eardrum like a slug to your chest
Pack a vest for your Jimmy in the city of s**
We in that Sunshine State where the bomb-ass hemp be
The state where you never find a dance floor empty
And pimps be on a mission for them greens
Lean mean money-making-machines servin’ fiends -Tupac Shakur “California Love”

See also
National Parks in Georgia

California girls
We’re unforgettable
Daisy dukes
Bikinis on top
Sun-kissed skin
So hot
We’ll melt your popsicle -Katy Perry “California Gurls”

Going To California with an aching in my heart
Someone told me there’s a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair – Led Zepplin “Going to California”

 
California - Los Angeles - Renting a Car in Los Angeles
 
Take a long drive with me
On california one, california one
And the road a-winding goes
From golden gate to roaring cliff-side
And the light is softly low as our hearts become sweetly untied
Neath the sun of california one
Take a long drown with me
Of california wine -The Decemberists “California One / Youth and Beauty Brigade” 
 

I wish they all could be California girls -The Beach Boys “California Girls”

It’s the edge of the world and all of western civilization
The sun may rise in the East at least it’s settled in a final location
It’s understood that Hollywood sells Californication -Red Hot Chili Peppers “Californication”

I just found out her ghost left town
The Queen of California is stepping down, down -John Mayer “Queen of California”

Oh, I’ll pick you up
If you come back to America, just hit me up
‘Cause this is crazy love, I’ll catch you on the flip side
If you come back to California, you should just hit me up -Lana Del Ray “California”

California - Los Angeles - Renting a Car in Los Angeles

California, Hallelujah
You and me are gonna live for today girl
I’m the luckiest man in the whole world
Stole my heart but can’t afford ya
All I know is I’m with you today girl
I’m the luckiest man in the whole world -James Blunt “Calfornia” 

California Weather Quotes

We only have two kinds of weather in California, magnificent and unusual. -James M. Cain

It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story. –Michael Connelly

The only way we know summer is coming is by the more chilling winds, the increased dust, the tawny color of the hills, and the general dying look of things. –Caroline C. Leighton

Another blinding California day. They were all blinding here. –William Bayer

The mornings along the coast where the fog and mist meet with the salty spray of the seas is one of my favourite smells. I love the smell in the evergreen forest just after it rains. -Paul Walker

See also
30 Awesome Quotes about Austin, Texas for Austin Instagram Captions & Statuses
California - Los Angeles - Renting a Car in Los Angeles

I just realized some things make me happier, and the good weather in California makes me happier. -Bianca Balti

The water came in a 30-year cycle. There would be five to six wet and wonderful years when there might be 19 to 25 inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of 12 to 16 inches of rain. And then the dry years would come … –John Steinbeck

People actually enjoy it when it rains in San Diego because we never get it. It’s a nice change of pace. When you live in Southern California, everybody says, ‘It’s so expensive there.’ I tell them, ‘It’s just a very expensive weather tax.’ -Steve Finley

If you’re in California, and it’s raining, stay home because nobody can drive in the rain. It’s like it’s raining frogs. They’re terrified. -Adam Ferrara

My California sunrise, there’s a real mist in the air. I think of the mountains. You can smell the farm fields. You can smell the dirt and the lights and the whole sun. -Jon Pardi

Trust the horticulturalist: California’s genius may be green, but it’s underlying beauty is brown. -Jared Farmer

California - Los Angeles - Renting a Car in Los Angeles

Quotes About Not Liking California

California is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she’s on top of the world, not knowing she’s dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks. –S.E. Hinton

It’s mostly full of nonsense and delusion and egomania. They think they’ll be young and beautiful forever, even though most of them aren’t even young and beautiful now. –Christopher Hitchens

It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year. -Truman Capote

Whatever starts in California, unfortunately, has an inclination to spread. -President Jimmy Carter

California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of lifestyle. This alone warrants their doom.  -Don DeLillo

See also
The 10 Best Day Trips from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

California, still a magical vanity fair. –Eileen Granfors

California - Los Angeles - Renting a Car in Los Angeles

California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn’t really need. You can quote me on that. -Saul Bellow

About the only part of a California house you can’t put your foot through is the front door. All it did was hurt my shoulder and make me mad. –Raymond Chandler

There is nothing remarkable about this guac, about any guac, and California needs to calm the f*** down. They’re just avocados. Guac is guac and while sometimes it’s slimy and disgusting, it’s never delicious. –Caroline Kepnes

California is full of homesick people. -Judy Van Der Veer

Out here in California, in the Pacific Ocean, the sharks have a bad attitude. -Katy Mixon

In California, they don’t throw their garbage away – they make it into TV shows. -Woody Allen

California - Los Angeles - Renting a Car in Los Angeles

Southern California, where the American Dream came too true. -Lawrence Ferlinghetti

California is a fine place to live if you happen to be an orange. -Fred Allen

The best way to live in California is to be from somewhere else. -Cormac Mccarthy

There’s nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure. -Ross MacDonald

5 Things to Pack for Your Trip to California

Canada - Toronto -Luggage

A California Guide Book so you can get information quickly even when you don’t have internet access. While I love using blogs to plan my trips, I like to supplement with a guidebook that I can use on the go. 

Backup Charging Bank for your cell phone since you’ll be using it as a camera, GPS system, and general travel genie.

 

A Camera since California is super photogenic. I use a mix of my Nikon D810 and my  Samsung8 smartphone these days.

A GoPro for underwater and action photography. If you’re headed to California for a beach vacation, you’ll love the shots you can get from the water!

See also
Best Quotes about Maui

A Great Day Bag so you can carry what you need with you (like your camera, snacks, water, sunscreen, cash, etc). My current favorite is the Pacsafe Citysafe, which is especially great for California because it has many anti-theft features.

More California Travel Resources

 

Headed to California? Check out my post on things to know before you rent a car in Los Angeles and my overview of the best living history museums in the US (including one in San Diego)! 

Love Travel Quotes?

I’m a little obsessed with travel quotes. If you are too, check out this massive guide to 250 Inspirational Travel Quotes & Travel Instagram Captions, plus:

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance!

 

Before you leave for Italy make sure you have a valid Travel Insurance Policy because accidents happen on the road. I pay for World Nomads, and I happily recommend them. It’s especially important to get travel insurance if you’ll be hanging out in cities (like Rome…ahem) where tourists can be the victims of pickpockets. Italy is the only country I’ve been to (out of almost seventy) where I’ve had someone try to pick my pocket!

I have been a paying customer of World Nomads for travel insurance for two years, and I happily recommend them.  If you get sick, injured, or have your stuff stolen, you’ll be happy to have the ability to pay for your medical bills or replace what’s stolen or broken.

Pin these California Quotes & California Instagram Captions for Your Trip!

Quotes about California and California Instagram Captions
Quotes about California and California Instagram Captions

In this Article:

See also
The Best National Parks in Alaska

2 thoughts on “101 Gorgeous Quotes About California & Fabulous California Instagram Captions”

Leave a Comment