No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where like all desert dwellers they dream their buildings rather than design them.

Death Valley is really wide-open - it's bigger than Rhode Island - and it's less a part of California than an ungoverned territory so there's lots of weird cops-and-robbers stuff going on.

Crucial to understanding federalism in modern day America is the concept of mobility or 'the ability to vote with your feet.' If you don't support the death penalty and citizens packing a pistol - don't come to Texas. If you don't like medicinal marijuana and gay marriage don't move to California.

My family belongs to a tennis club in Valencia California so I always go there. I play a lot of tennis with my dad and swim. And I like to go to the gym there.

Well it's a little harder in New York. It's not as forgiving to a film crew. You hold up a bunch of New Yorkers who can't cross the street they're not going to take it well. Southern California? They'll wait. It's cool man. In New York they're like 'Are you kidding me? I gotta get to work.'

I've been in California for about 15 years now. You're always in your car and insulated. I miss New York so much.

I arrived in California with no job no car and no money but like millions of other girls a dream.

I was an economics major in college and every summer after school I would drive my car from California from Claremont men's college at the time to New York. And I worked on Wall Street.

You know every family and every business in California knows what it means to go through tough times.

Sometimes I think I might not have written 'The Age of Miracles' if I hadn't grown up in California if I hadn't been exposed to its very particular blend of beauty and disaster of danger and denial.