The Best Quotes about Iowa

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Last Updated on: 11th August 2021, 04:31 pm

What is it about Iowa? I’m the shortest guy in the state.  -Jason Alexander

My debut upon the world’s stage occurred on February 26, 1845, in the State of Iowa.  -Buffalo Bill

My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman. -George Stigler

I grew up in Washington State and then eventually found my way back to Iowa City for grad school. -Chelsea Cain

We have a long tradition in this state of caring for our neighbors  – it is truly an Iowa value.  -Thomas Vilsack

I like Iowa. I know Iowa. I’ve spent some time in Iowa. Good people in Iowa. It’s a great state. -Martin O’Malley

I want to caucus in Iowa. I’ll caucus all over the state. I don’t caucus in California. You don’t caucus where you live. It doesn’t look good.  -Pat Paulsen

My first district was Northwest Iowa. In 2002, it became North Central Iowa hooking around Des Moines down to the south, clear up to the northeast corner of the state.  -Tom Latham

My professional apprenticeship at Iowa State College from 1930 to 1943 could not have been better; the Great Depression made it so, and the talented younger economists at Ames during that period made it an exciting and profitable intellectual experience.  -Theodore Schultz

As the 29th state to join the United States of America, it is our turn to show the nation what represents Iowa. Our commitment to quality education, hard work, and small -town values are all represented in the Iowa quarter.  -Leonard Boswell

Each state in the Union is honored in the order of when it ratified the Constitution and became a part of the United States. This September it is Iowa’s turn. Iowa became the 29th state to be admitted to the union on December 28, 1846.  -Leonard Boswell

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You need to make a trip to Des Moines in August, because the Iowa State Fair really is a sight to see. The Iowa Fairgrounds are usually packed for those 11 days, and you get a real sense of what a classic Midwest fair is all about.  -Zach Johnson

In 1988, as an unknown candidate, totally unknown, I won Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, won South Dakota. I was ahead in every Super Tuesday state the day after South Dakota. The only problem was I didn’t have enough money. I had a million dollars left, and Al Gore had three and Michael Dukakis had three and it was lights out.  -Dick Gephardt

Of all states that understands local control of schools, Iowa is such a state.  -George W. Bush

We have a long tradition in this state of caring for our neighbors  – it is truly an Iowa value.  -Tom Vilsack

The greatest words you hear in college basketball are Ohio State advances. (The Iowa upset) is amazing. But again, it’s all the proof you need that there’s no guarantee.  -Thad Matta

Chris Christie said he will top Donald Trump’s Iowa State Fair helicopter entrance by riding in on a pony. As a result, all the ponies in Iowa have gone into hiding.  -Conan O’Brien

It is true that I was born in Iowa, but I can’t speak for my twin sister.  – Abigail Van Buren

I wanted to say to Governor Dean, don’t be hard on yourself about hooting and hollering. If I had spent the money you did and got 18 percent, I’d still be in Iowa hooting and hollering.  – Al Sharpton

I’m a member of the Academy, but I don’t know who all the other Academy members are. It’s not like a politician who knows who is in the Iowa caucus.  – Albert Brooks

I never graduated from Iowa, but I was only there for two terms  – Truman’s and Eisenhower’s.  – Alex Karras

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I just finished ‘Butter’ for Weinstein, a comedy with this incredible cast  – Hugh Jackman, Olivia Wilde, Alicia Silverstone  – all -star cast and it was a fun set to be on. I’ve gotten really lucky to get all these down -to -earth cast members. ‘Butter”s about butter carving in Iowa.  – Ashley Greene

I’m happy wherever I go, whatever I do. I’m happy in Iowa, I’m happy here in California.  – Ashton Kutcher

You see for me, America is an idea. It is a stage for transformation. I felt when I came to Iowa City from Calcutta that suddenly I could be a new person . . . What America offers me is romanticism and hope . . . Suddenly, I found myself in a country where  – Bharati Mukherjee

I had a 2 -week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5 -minute wedding in a lawyer’s office above the coffee shop where we’d been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, ‘By the time you get this, Daddy, I’ll already be Mrs. Blaise!’  – Bharati Mukherjee

My debut upon the world’s stage occurred on February 26, 1845, in the State of Iowa.  – Buffalo Bill

When I left the University of Iowa and made the decision to come to Rutgers, I said to my athletic director, as both of us stood there crying, ‘I wish I could just take Iowa to the East Coast. That would be the best of all worlds.’ Of course, I couldn’t. I have the best of all worlds now by being at Rutgers, being in this part of the country and being able to embrace and receive the great prestige that is part of the Big Ten.  – C. Vivian Stringer

It wouldn’t do me much good to back somebody that won in Iowa if they can’t carry on the campaign elsewhere.  – Chuck Grassley

Strengthening local airports in Iowa is important for economic development and improving the quality of life our rural areas and urban communities  – Chuck Grassley

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In any year, the stats in Iowa show we are in a relatively safe location, but that can change dramatically; a lot of it depends on what travels through our campus.  – Chuck Green

When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take my work to the actual reading public.  – Daniel Woodrell

In 1988, as an unknown candidate, totally unknown, I won Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, won South Dakota. I was ahead in every Super Tuesday state the day after South Dakota. The only problem was I didn’t have enough money. I had a million dollars left, and Al Gore had three and Michael Dukakis had three and it was lights out.  – Dick Gephardt

The tolerance of the public is diminishing. We’re spending time on the wrong people. It’s nutty. There has to be a better way. Why are we stripsearching Aunt Molly from Iowa and letting on Richard Reid?  – Donald J. Carty

What are you trying to protect heterosexual marriages from? There isn’t a limited amount of love in Iowa. It isn’t a non -renewable resource. If Amy and Barbara or Mike and Steve love each other, it doesn’t mean that John and Mary can’t.  – Ed Fallon

Iowa City is okay as Midwestern cities go, but theres no food, no culture, no ocean.  – Elin Hilderbrand

I’m 100% Norwegian. Three generations removed and all continuous inbreeding of Norwegian of Minnesota and Iowa, so I traveled to Norway before.  – Eric Christian Olsen

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.  – Fred Allen

My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman.  – George Stigler

I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa.  – Grant Wood

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The thing I’m most proud of here at Iowa is putting the ANF on our headgear.  – Hayden Fry

Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing.  – James Fenton

Our family was very fond of the University of Iowa. We thought it was a good place to go.  – James Van Allen

I was born in Hawaii, but I was raised in Iowa.  – Jason Momoa

Rick Perry was philosophical about (his election losses). He said, ‘Last week was Iowa. Yesterday was New Hampshire. ‘ He said at least it’s giving him a chance to learn the names of all the states.  – Jay Leno

John Kerry was the big winner in Iowa. Ted Kennedy introduced Kerry as the ‘comeback kid.’ That used to be Bill Clinton’s name  – because every time he would come back to a city, he would find out if he had a kid or not.  – Jay Leno

You gotta love Rick Perry’s swagger. The Texas Governor is out there in the Iowa cornfields, unabashedly going to toe -to -toe with President Obama, doing his best to instantly cast himself as the big dog in the Republican pack.  – Jeff Goodell

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day -to -day discipline that’s needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.  – John Dalton

Political pandering comes in all shapes and sizes, but every four years the presidential primary bring us in contact with its purest form  – praising ethanol subsidies amid the corn fields of Iowa.  – John Sununu

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I’m not competing in Iowa for a reason.  – Jon Huntsman, Jr.

I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I come to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork.  – Joni Ernst

I’m an ecumenical reader, grew up with all sorts of fiction, teach writing, went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, so my tastes and interests are broad.  – Justin Cronin

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere -the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years -she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.  – Justin Cronin

I love mythology, grew up loving it. I’m a middle kid, big family, that’s the thing you did in the farm country. I lived in Iowa, I loved mythology. I don’t know, we’re like that.  – Kellan Lutz

Recruiting at Iowa has never been easy, and I don’t think it ever will be. Our biggest challenge has always been to get people to visit our campus. If we can get them here, I feel like we give ourselves a chance because we do have a lot to offer.  – Kirk Ferentz

I pity the Jews trying to get through life with only half a Bible. That’s like trying to get from here to San Francisco with a road map that stops at Dubuque, Iowa.  – Kurt Vonnegut

I have never understood the Iowa caucus.  – Larry King

(On upcoming racing plans) Right now I am going to go back into training and then I am going to resurface and do the BAA Mile, The Boston Mile, and then I am going to do the USA Championships Mile out in Des Moines, Iowa. Then it is either going to be between The Penn or Drake Relays and then I will go back into training again and start another kind of session.  – Leonel Manzano

In the past, in order to continue as a candidate, a serious candidate, you had to be in the top three finishes in Iowa. You had to be in the top two out of New Hampshire. All our presidents elected in the past half -century finished either first or second in New Hampshire and in the top three in Iowa. That changed with the Citizens United, when we gave unlimited amounts of money.  – Mark Shields

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Is there any other democracy where the voters are as spoiled as they are in the United States? Especially, of course, in certain states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, where the old joke is literally true about the citizens who say they haven’t yet formed an opinion about a candidate because they’ve only met the fellow a few times.  – Michael Kinsley

Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.  – Michele Bachmann

I want to caucus in Iowa. I’ll caucus all over the state. I don’t caucus in California. You don’t caucus where you live. It doesn’t look good.  – Pat Paulsen

Contrary to slanderous Eastern opinion, much of Iowa is not flat, but rolling hills country with a lot of timber, a handsome and imaginative landscape, crowded with constant small changes of scene and full of little creeks winding with pools where shiners, crappies and catfish hover.  – Paul Engle

Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did. But they were sleigh bells, not church bells, for we lived in a part of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where there were no churches.  – Paul Engle

There must be an alternative between Hollywood and New York, between those two places psychically as well as geographically. The University of Iowa tries to offer such a community, congenial to the young writer, with his uneasiness about writing as an honorable career, or with his excess of ego about calling himself a writer. – Paul Engle

I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses.  – Rick Perry

In Iowa, we take care of people. That’s all I think I need to say.  – Steve King

Quality, affordable housing is a key element of a strong and secure Iowa.  – Tom Vilsack

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Let us tackle the big issues with bold ideas that transform Iowa to accomplish our shared mission to grow Iowa, and realize our shared vision of Iowa as the best place to live, work and raise a family.  – Tom Vilsack

We have a long tradition in this state of caring for our neighbors  – it is truly an Iowa value.  – Tom Vilsack

I think that standing onstage on January 19th, and my father had just defied all expectations and won Iowa, was by far the most surreal moment.  – Vanessa Kerry

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars. -Fred Allen

I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses. -Rick Perry

Iowa is home to teachers, farmers, lawyers, factory workers, and many others who work hard every day to provide the best for their families and their future. -Leonard Boswell

It is true that I was born in Iowa, but I can’t speak for my twin sister. -Abigail Van Buren

I’m from Iowa, we don’t know what cool is! -Ashton Kutcher

We have a long tradition in this state of caring for our neighbors  – it is truly an Iowa value. -Tom Vilsack

I have never understood the Iowa caucus. -Larry King

Quality, affordable housing is a key element of a strong and secure Iowa. -Tom Vilsack

I’m happy wherever I go, whatever I do. I’m happy in Iowa, I’m happy here in California. -Ashton Kutcher

Let us tackle the big issues with bold ideas that transform Iowa to accomplish our shared mission to grow Iowa, and realize our shared vision of Iowa as the best place to live, work and raise a family. -Tom Vilsack

Our family was very fond of the University of Iowa. We thought it was a good place to go. -James Van Allen

I spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day -to -day discipline that’s needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa. -John Dalton

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My debut upon the world’s stage occurred on February 26th, 1845. -Buffalo Bill

My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman. -George Stigler

Iowa’s the worst. Iowa’s just nothing, just flat as far as you can see. It’s the only state in the country where you can stand on your front porch and actually watch your dog run away for three days. -Greg Fitzsimmons

The new specialty at the Iowa fair this year is fried butter on a stick. Of course, if you’re like me and you want like to eat healthy, get your stick of butter baked. -Jay Leno

If Iowa is the ‘heart’ land, what part of the human body is Los Angeles? -Pat Paulsen

Of all states that understands local control of schools, Iowa is such a state. -George W. Bush

Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, bypassed the debate before the Iowa caucuses because he objected to the participation of moderator Megyn Kelly as well a press release defending her.Beyond the Trump tantrum, we wondered if this had something bigger to say about the state of the media and politics and how politics is practiced today. -Michel Martin

I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa. -Grant Wood

The greatest words you hear in college basketball are Ohio State advances. (The Iowa upset) is amazing. But again, it’s all the proof you need that there’s no guarantee. -Thad Matta

I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked in Des Moines that afternoon—they were coming home from high school—but I had no time for thoughts like that…So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines. -Jack Kerouac

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Speaking of River City in The Music Man & his home town, Mason City, Iowa: I didn’t have to make up anything. I simply remembered Mason City as closely as I could. -Meredith Willson

you are brilliant and subtle if you come from Iowa and really strange and you live as you live and you are always very well taken care of if you come from Iowa. -Gertrude Stein

What’s right for New York or California, is not necessarily right for Iowa. -Joni Ernst

I’m not competing in Iowa for a reason. -Jon Huntsman, Jr.

I watched what this man [Cruz] did to Dr. Ben Carson, who I respect, in Iowa, where he said that Ben Carson is out of the race  – he has left Iowa and he’s out of the race. And I thought it was disgraceful. -Donald Trump

In any year, the stats in Iowa show we are in a relatively safe location, but that can change dramatically; a lot of it depends on what travels through our campus. -Chuck Green

Taking a scenic route in Southeast Iowa is like talking about a good Barry Manilow album. You have to make certain allowances. -Bill Bryson

If I was going for the popular vote I would’ve won easily. But I would’ve been in California and New York. I wouldn’t have been in Maine. I wouldn’t have been in Iowa. I wouldn’t have been in Nebraska and all of those states that I had to win in order to win this. I would’ve been in New York, I would’ve been in California. I never even went there. -Donald Trump

I get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun. -John Darnielle

Secret Service agents detained an Iowa man with a gun who happened to be walking in a Des Moines park where President Bush was jogging. Were they out of their minds? White guys with guns put Bush in the White House. -Argus Hamilton

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What are you trying to protect heterosexual marriages from? There isn’t a limited amount of love in Iowa. It isn’t a non -renewable resource. If Amy and Barbara or Mike and Steve love each other, it doesn’t mean that John and Mary can’t. -Ed Fallon

I just came back from  – with Trump when I endorsed him in Iowa, in Marshalltown, a little town  – 27,000  – have a lot of Hispanics working there from Mexico in a private business, so they’re still here. I’m not saying they’re here illegally but they still come and they work, make money for their families, send the money back to Mexico or whatever, so it’s a big problem. -Joe Arpaio

I never graduated from Iowa, but I was only there for two terms  – Truman’s and Eisenhower’s. -Alex Karras

I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I come to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork. -Joni Ernst

My parents were born and raised in Iowa and my two brothers were born in Iowa before my family moved to California where I was born so I still really feel like I have those Midwestern roots. -Jennie Finch

I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa. It was because I spent 87 days going to every small town and fair and fish fry and BFW Hall, and there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points. There’s some counties maybe I won, that people didn’t expect, because people had a chance to see you and listen to you and get a sense of who you stood for and who you were fighting for. -Barack Obama

Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls  – you don’t find a sense of community in malls. -Bill Bryson

And Father said, “There are no happy endings.” “Right!” cried Iowa Bob – an odd mixture of exuberance and stoicism in his cracked voice. “Death is horrible, final, and frequently premature,” Coach Bob declared. “So what?” my father said. “Right!” cried Iowa Bob. “That’s the point: So what?” Thus the family maxim was that an unhappy ending did not undermine a rich and energetic life. This was based on the belief that there were no happy endings. -John Irving

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Where were they from originally? The Seabolts?” “I don’t know, Idaho, Oklahoma, Iowa. One of those red -neck states with vowels on both ends.” “You mean like Alaska? -Dana Stabenow

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t rightly see how somebody who claims to have had  -What’d you say? One partner? -can be welled trained.” He had a point. Her brain clicked away. “I was referring to the instructional videotapes my agency has all its new employees watch.” “They train you by watching videos?” His eyes narrowed reminding her of a hunter looking down a gun sight,”Now, ain’t that interesting.” She felt a little surge of pleasure as her child lost another few points on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Even a computer couldn’t have picked a more perfect match. -Susan Elizabeth Phillips

(On upcoming racing plans) Right now I am going to go back into training and then I am going to resurface and do the BAA Mile, The Boston Mile, and then I am going to do the USA Championships Mile out in Des Moines, Iowa. Then it is either going to be between The Penn or Drake Relays and then I will go back into training again and start another kind of session. -Leonel Manzano

Political pandering comes in all shapes and sizes, but every four years the presidential primary bring us in contact with its purest form  – praising ethanol subsidies amid the corn fields of Iowa. -John Sununu

My interest in chemistry was started by reading Robert Kennedy Duncan’s popular books while a high school student in Des Moines, Iowa, so that after some delay when it was possible for me to go to college I had definitely decided to specialize in chemistry. -Wallace Carothers

A major Iowa newspaper published an op -ed against Trump calling him a ‘self -absorbed, wholly unqualified feckless blowhard.’ Or as Trump put it, ‘You forgot very rich … I’m a very rich, self -absorbed, wholly unqualified feckless blowhard. Very, very rich.’ -Jimmy Fallon

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I thought the Wall Street Journal quote, they got a guy in Iowa to say I think exactly where I think this race is right now for a lot Republicans. He said, “Nobody in Iowa wants [Donald]Trump for president. But everybody in Iowa wants somebody like Trump for president.” That’s what you need. -Dalia Mogahed

All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn’t fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd;nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn’t fair. -Lyndon B. Johnson

A man from Iowa or Illinois will say ‘I’m from the Middle West’..a Georgian or a Mississipian may admit to being merely a Southerner…but no Texan, given the opportunity, ever said otherwise than ‘I’m from Texas’. -J. Frank Dobie

I’m a member of the Academy, but I don’t know who all the other Academy members are. It’s not like a politician who knows who is in the Iowa caucus. – Albert Brooks

Claire believed she was teetering literally on the edge of sanity. A strong wind was all it would take to blow her one way or the other. Iowa had its share of storms, strong winds and tornadoes, they were all unpredictable. It made an ironic parallel for her life. -Aleatha Romig

I’m a simple hillbilly. I don’t like eating modern, industrialized, fast food. I grew up eating home -cooked food. So when I’m traveling abroad, like when I recently received a six -month writing fellowship to Iowa in the U.S., I like to cook my own food. -Andrea Hirata

I once heard a tobacco -chewing hog farmer say that, in Iowa, folks like to spread out their children like dog shit on a dance floor. -Andrew Smith

I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class. -Bharati Mukherjee

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I had a 2 -week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5 -minute wedding in a lawyer’s office above the coffee shop where we’d been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, ‘By the time you get this, Daddy, I’ll already be Mrs. Blaise!’ -Bharati Mukherjee

My debut upon the world’s stage occurred on February 26, 1845, in the State of Iowa. -Buffalo Bill

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like ‘a plantation,’ adding in a significant tone of voice that ‘you know what I mean …’She did not repeat this trope, for some reason, when addressing the electors of Iowa or New Hampshire. She’s willing to ring the other bell, though, if it suits her. But when an actual African -American challenger comes along, she rather tends to pout and wince at his presumption (or did until recently). -Christopher Hitchens

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and ‘experience’ to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband’s help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short -term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? -Christopher Hitchens

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Being from Iowa, I can tell you that Vegas is not normal. -Dave Keuning

Gleaming like a searchlight, Iowa moon, silver plate. -Dennis Vickers

In 1988, as an unknown candidate, totally unknown, I won Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, won South Dakota. I was ahead in every Super Tuesday state the day after South Dakota. The only problem was I didn’t have enough money. I had a million dollars left, and Al Gore had three and Michael Dukakis had three and it was lights out. -Dick Gephardt

Iowa City is okay as Midwestern cities go, but there’s no food, no culture, no ocean. -Elin Hilderbrand

For graduate school I ended up going to the University of Iowa, which is, of course, the best graduate writing program in the country. -Elin Hilderbrand

I’m 100% Norwegian. Three generations removed and all continuous inbreeding of Norwegian of Minnesota and Iowa, so I traveled to Norway before. -Eric Christian Olsen

My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman. -George Stigler

I’ve been watching politics for 35 or 40 years and you just never know. You can have one person win the Iowa caucus and then the whole picture changes ten minutes later. The same thing can happen again after New Hampshire. I have no idea what’s going to happen with our country in the future. -Jackie Mason

Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing. -James Fenton

Our family was very fond of the University of Iowa. We thought it was a good place to go. -James Van Allen

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I’m not competing in Iowa for a reason. -Jon Huntsman Jr.

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere -the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years -she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte. -Justin Cronin

I’m an ecumenical reader, grew up with all sorts of fiction, teach writing, went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, so my tastes and interests are broad. -Justin Cronin

In certain parts of the world  – where I’m at right now in New York, you’re going to pay a whole lot more. In Los Angeles, your average starter home is a million dollars. So I need more money in Los Angeles to live like a normal person. If I live in another city, Iowa maybe, I wouldn’t need as much. -Karrine Steffans

He was a playboy type in his late 30’s, and a sharp dresser, tonight being no exception. Dave wore a designer sports jacket and chic designer jeans; not at all what you would expect from an FBI agent’s undercover expense budget. His wife (or whoever she was), Julia, was a conservative dresser, with more of what you would expect an FBI agent to be wearing. She had mousy brown hair, spoke in nasal tones, and was somewhat frumpy; not much to look at. They went together about as well as Brad Pitt and a den mother from Davenport Iowa. -Kenneth Eade

I think you know how it works, Senator. The big chemical companies fill the coffers of one of your colleagues who is a lawmaker from an agricultural state such as, well, let’s take Iowa, for example, and the lawmaker recommends the president to install industry executives in high positions, such as the head of the FDA or the EPA, and, this way, the industry can approve its own products without safety testing. -Kenneth Eade

I pity the Jews trying to get through life with only half a Bible. That’s like trying to get from here to San Francisco with a road map that stops at Dubuque, Iowa.”Grandfather Wills , Hocus Pocus” -Kurt Vonnegut

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As the 29th state to join the United States of America, it is our turn to show the nation what represents Iowa. Our commitment to quality education, hard work, and small -town values are all represented in the Iowa quarter. -Leonard Boswell

Iowa is home to teachers, farmers, lawyers, factory workers, and many others who work hard every day to provide the best for their families and their future. -Leonard Boswell

On -yez, where are you from, dear?’ asked a black -slacked, frosted -haired woman whose skin was papery and melanomic with suntan. ‘Originally.’ She eyed Agnes’s outfit as if it might be what in fact it was: a couple of blue things purchased in a department store in Cedar Rapids. Where am I from?’ Agnes said it softly. ‘Iowa.’ She had a tendency not to speak up. Where?’ the woman scowled, bewildered. Iowa,’ Agnes repeated loudly. The woman in black touched Agnes’s wrist and leaned in confidentially. She moved her mouth in a concerned and exaggerated way, like an exercise. ‘No, dear,’ she said. ‘Here we say O -hi -o. -Lorrie Moore

But Bachmann’s efforts to strut her IQ were undermined by gaffes galore. In New Hampshire, she hailed the state for being “where the shot was heard round the world in Lexington and Concord.” (That blast emanated from Massachusetts.) On June 27, the day of her official announcement in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, Bachmann proclaimed in a Fox News interview that “John Wayne was from Waterloo.” (Wayne was in fact from Winterset, Iowa; serial killer John Wayne Gacy was from Waterloo.) From now on, her son Lucas razzed his mother, “you can’t say George Washington was the first president unless we Google that shit first. – Mark Halperin

Everything I need to know, I learned in Iowa. I grew up here in Iowa. -Michele Bachmann

Ballot you go, the more volatile the polls tend to be: polls of House races are less accurate than polls of Senate races, which are in turn less accurate than polls of presidential races. Polls of primaries, also, are considerably less accurate than general election polls. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, the average poll missed by about eight points, far more than implied by its margin of error. The problems in polls of the Republican primaries of 2012 may have been even worse.26 In many of the major states, in fact—including Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, Michigan, Washington, Colorado, Ohio, Alabama, and Mississippi—the candidate ahead in the polls a week before the election lost. -Nate Silver

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I want to caucus in Iowa. I’ll caucus all over the state. I don’t caucus in California. You don’t caucus where you live. It doesn’t look good. -Pat Paulsen

Contrary to slanderous Eastern opinion, much of Iowa is not flat, but rolling hills country with a lot of timber, a handsome and imaginative landscape, crowded with constant small changes of scene and full of little creeks winding with pools where shiners, crappies and catfish hover. -Paul Engle

Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did. But they were sleigh bells, not church bells, for we lived in a part of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where there were no churches. -Paul Engle

Tell you something,” the raven said. “I was flying over the Midwest once.” He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. “I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the updrafts. Every time he saw water he’d go flying down toward it, yelling, “I found it! I found it!” The poor sonofabitch was looking for the ocean. And every time he saw water, he thought that was the ocean. He didn’t know anything about ponds or lakes or anything. All the water he ever saw was the ocean. He thought that was all the water there was. -Peter S. Beagle

I knew from the time Willie was only a little boy that he could sell beachfront property in Iowa if he put his mind to it. When I was a commercial fisherman, Willie sold fish on the side of the road with Kay or me. Willie can still quote some of the sales pitches: “Yes, sir, these are golden buffalo, the pride of the Ouachita River.” Willie was even selling carp, a worthless fish you couldn’t sell at the fish market, but he was able to unload quite a few of them with his salesmanship and charm. Willie always said if you can sell fish, you can sell anything. He sold candy from his locker while he was in elementary school and sold worms from an old wooden boat on our river dock. The boy always knew how to make a dollar. -Phil Robertson

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If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top -heavy, and tax -mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. -Ray Bradbury

Quality, affordable housing is a key element of a strong and secure Iowa. -Thomas Vilsack

Let us tackle the big issues with bold ideas that transform Iowa to accomplish our shared mission to grow Iowa, and realize our shared vision of Iowa as the best place to live, work and raise a family. -Thomas Vilsack

Kiowa who saw it happen said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something -Just Boom -then down. Not like in the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle -not like that. Kiowa said. The bastard just flat fuck fell. Boom down. Nothing else. -Tim O’Brien

When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate of an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote. -Tim O’Brien

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Hickock whistled and rolled his eyes. “Wow!” he said, and then, summoning his talent for something very like total recall, he began an account of the long ride  -the approximately ten thousand miles he and Smith had covered in the past six weeks. He talked for an hour and twenty -five minutes  -from two -fifty to four -fifteen  -and told, while Nye attempted to list them, of highways and hotels, motels, rivers, towns, and cities, a chorus of entwining names: Apache, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Santillo, San Luis Potosi, Acapulco, San Diego, Dallas, Omaha, Sweetwater, Stillwater, Tenville Junction, Tallahassee, Needles, Miami, Hotel Nuevo Waldorf, Somerset Hotel, Hotel Simone, Arrowhead Motel, Cherokee Motel, and many, many more. He gave them the name of the man in Mexico to whom he’d sold his own 1940 Chevrolet, and confessed that he had stolen a newer model in Iowa. -Truman Capote

God what an outfield,’ he says. ‘What a left field.’ He looks up at me, and I look down at him. ‘This must be heaven,’ he says.No. It’s Iowa,’ I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl -child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh -cut grass small that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoelss Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.I think you’re right, Joe,’ I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration. -W.P. Kinsella

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