Oklahoma Quotations

I remember the early 1980s, when I first got one of these fabulous film critic jobs. The downside was sitting through 'Splatteria III: The Dismembering of the Clampett Clan' or 'The Oklahoma Meatgrinder Massacre' or some such. The headaches unleashed by watching attractive kids die week after week after week cannot be imagined.

I graduated from the University of Oklahoma, and I got the opportunity to take some on-camera classes while I was in school and met a casting director who informed me quite a bit before my move out to L.A.; it made L.A. feel possible, coming from Oklahoma and not having a family that was in the industry.

I like to call the ethos I grew up with 'Oklahoma values.' But you'd be just as accurate if you said 'American values.' Except for our lack of a seacoast, Oklahoma has a little bit of just about everything that's American.

I have long hair because I'm American Indian. I'm an Oklahoma boy, and I'm very proud of my heritage.

Having grown up in Oklahoma when it was one of the last states which prohibited liquor, I grew up with War On Drugs, where every teenager knew who the bootleggers were

I have deep roots in this Oklahoma soil. It makes me proud.

My mother was 13 when I was born. My childhood was pretty frantic, to say the least. My mother left when I was about 5, and Daddy started me singing in clubs. Then I started singing on the radio in Oklahoma City when I was 7.

When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn't just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms.

I consider myself a Texan. I grew up in Texas and Oklahoma.

I was a kid from Oklahoma who never wanted to be a singer, but was told I could sing. And things snowballed.

Resilience is woven deeply into the fabric of Oklahoma. Throw us an obstacle, and we grow stronger.

It is so basic as to be mundane, but in disaster relief, all the good will in the world can go to hell in a hand basket if the logistics don't work. In Ethiopia at the best of times, the logistics are difficult. It is a huge country - about the same size as Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma combined. It is also a transportation nightmare.

I frankly encountered more anti-Semitism in the northeast than I did in Oklahoma, but not much either place. Anti-Semitism is not part of my life.

I was raised in Oklahoma. I was actually born in Tulsa, but I grew up in a small town on the west side of Oklahoma called Elk City on a farm, where my dad grew up, actually.

I love writing about Oklahoma. I love writing Oklahoma characters; I love playing Southwestern characters.

You could have a hit in California that no one had heard of in Oklahoma.

I tried to film 'Leaves of Grass' in Oklahoma, but it was literally about a million dollars less to shoot in Louisiana.

Are there any swamps in Oklahoma? Yes, there is. It's called Tulsa.

My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.

The reason gas prices are so high is because the oil is in Texas and Oklahoma and all the dipsticks are in Washington.

I can't go into Oklahoma without thinking about Larry Clark's photography book 'Tulsa.' It's a great book about how life works.

I deeply regret those situations that have blemished the image of the University of Oklahoma, and I hope that I can rectify the embarrassment I have brought the university.

The people of Oklahoma deserve better. We deserve leadership that's willing and unafraid to take a public stand against bigotry and bullying.

I find myself hoping I can get on a TV show, and then people from Oklahoma will come to my restaurant. Then I'll be able to make enough money to open my own place.

I grew up a wrestler; for a long time in Oklahoma I was a wrestler.

I had lots of breaks. I guess the one that got my foot in the door was singing the National Anthem at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City in '74.

We must give Oklahoma families the opportunity to thrive and prosper. We must give all Oklahomans the tools necessary to pursue the American dream. And then, we must get out of the way.

As a European I had fit in almost seamlessly in New York for the last 25 years, but in Oklahoma I stood out like a sore thumb.

Oh, honey, I'm from Oklahoma! This is who I am - middle-class all the way!

I grew up in Oklahoma and Missouri, and I just loved film. My folks would take us to the drive-in on summer nights, and we'd sit on the hood of the car. I just had this profound love for storytelling.

I wrote 'Happy Man' with a couple of boys of mine. I have been writing in Nashville for a long time. Of course I was writing songs back in Oklahoma when I was a kid.

I play golf with my shirttail out. I own a golf course because it's very, very close to my house, and I don't want to drive 45 minutes to the north side of Oklahoma City to play golf every day. I have race horses 'cause I love horses and it's my hobby.

When I was a freshman at Oklahoma in 1946, the game was sold out - and it's been sold out ever since.

I think it's awful that the state of Oklahoma a couple of years ago passed this law to give the same tuition to illegals as they do to people who are residents of Oklahoma. I think it's wrong.

For my undergraduate work, I went to Oklahoma State University and graduated from there in 1977

Where I live in Oklahoma, it's all ranchers. My friends are all cowboys and pretty rough guys. If I had a hot tub back there, I may as well have Richard Simmons come over and live with me.

In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman.

I grew up in southeastern Oklahoma on a working cattle ranch, and it was always very romantic to me: The West, the cowboy, the Western way of life.

My favorite musical? I don't. It changes all the time. I'm just a diehard, I'm totally old school, like I'll sit and watch, if they are re-doing Oklahoma in New York, I will be the first one there.

When I left, after my divorce, when I left Oklahoma, I never looked back. It was the future. It was looking forward from then on.

When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn't know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears.

I'll keep us out of war with Oklahoma!

I don't want to look like Connecticut, no offense, I don't want to look like Oklahoma, I don't want to look like California. I want to be uniquely Texas. And that's not to diss anybody else.

An Oklahoma girl like me wouldn't even know how to be a diva. I'm just a person who has a cool job. I love to be at home. I rarely go to clubs... and I always wear underwear! I just know I'd fall down, and that's not for everyone to see.

People come up to me all the time who saw Dad in 'Oklahoma!' or 'Pajama Game,' and they say they'll never forget it.

Governor is not the position to have in Oklahoma. It is the head coach of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State or Tulsa.

As an Oklahoma quarterback, you learn to perform under pressure.

Where I grew up - we started out in Oklahoma and then moved to Missouri - it was considered hubris to talk about yourself. And the downside of that was that ideas rarely got exchanged, or true feelings.

We don't have milk cows. People have so many stereotypes of people from where I come from - Oklahoma. We don't ride around in covered wagons, either.

Oklahoma residents are known for not backing down from a fight in the political arena, on the gridiron, NBA courts or rodeo arenas, but in their reaction to the bombing, they knew intuitively they would not find restoration in rage.

I want my permanent address to be in Oklahoma. Someday, when I get married and I have kids, that's where I want to raise my kids.

The Oklahoma City bombing was simple technology, horribly used. The problem is not technology. The problem is the person or persons using it.

We are pleased to reach this agreement with one of Oklahoma's leading providers of home care services. CV Medical Solutions has an excellent reputation in the communities it serves and will complement our current facility in Tulsa. This acquisition demonstrates our commitment to the home care needs of the Oklahoma market.

We are looking to them. Oklahoma did an excellent job getting people paid promptly.

We're going to take our resources and spread them across a wider reach. We'll repay the citizens of Oklahoma City and provide them with their best NBA experience, because this might be their only one. But we'll try not to lose step with what we were doing in the New Orleans marketplace. We don't want people (in New Orleans) to ask, 'Where were you?' These are our fans. And our fellow citizens.

When we come back and what we do is a real good question. We're looking at Oklahoma City and here in Baton Rouge. Playing in the Arena has good and bad possibilities. If we could do it in a way that we'd have a full crowd, it would be ecstatic. If we have 1,500 people, it would be horrible. That might send a signal there was no hope there.

Unfortunately, it also blows up real good, as the folks in Oklahoma City found out. Our food supplies are being fertilized with explosives.

With the stadium and the facilities we have now, we can recruit all over the country. There are schools like Miami and Oklahoma who are always going to recruit better than we are just because they are Miami and Oklahoma. But with our stadium and facilities, we should be able to recruit anybody.

We know about his background, and every once in a while he'll mention something about Florida or Oklahoma or the NFL. When you have a coach come in with that much experience and success, you automatically give him respect.

Oklahoma's always been good to me.

Oklahoma is very beautiful, and Eric loves beauty, but he already has that in you.

I like California but I'm dyed-in-the-wool Oklahoma. I see a deer in L.A., and everybody's standing around it taking pictures. Back home, that's the enemy!

We also want to give the women driving up from Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma about 2 ½ hours to think about what they're doing, and maybe change their minds. People come from all over the United States to have abortions here.

Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has.

People don't know what it means to be champions. Oklahoma invented it.

I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

We are honored to host the Oklahoma Golf Classic.

Yes it's true. He's headed to Oklahoma State.

We have raised a lot of money. But we're still helping people with disaster relief efforts for the Oklahoma City bombing -- and that was six years ago.

I used to limp around my neighborhood imitating him. I did my Bar Mitzvah with an Oklahoma drawl.

Any questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson].

We're growing, we've prospered and all we needed was just a chance. The old image of Oklahoma City being a minor-league city is outdated. We've always been a great place to live with low-cost housing, virtually no traffic congestion, fresh water and clear air. But we've never been perceived as a great place to vacation. All our positives started to mushroom up in the last 18 months.

Growing up in Oklahoma, there wasn't much to do. Play sports, do a lot of drugs, or read and watch movies, which is what I did.

One day in Dipstick, Nebraska, or Landfill, Oklahoma, is worth more to me than an eternity in Dante's plastic Paradiso, or Yeats's gold-plated Byzantium.

LSU, Alabama and Arkansas are big, physical and athletic. Add Oklahoma State and Memphis -- there are our five losses.

Los Angeles is really the only place where I can go and say our houses are only $250,000, and people will get excited about that. I can't do that in Oklahoma or Texas, but I can do that in L.A.

Les was perennially in the Top 25 while at Oklahoma State, and he wasn't alone in the state like he is at LSU. He and Bob Stoops regularly gave one another headaches a lot of those years.

My focus all week has been on our players. They didn't come to Oklahoma State expecting this to happen. It's been hard on them. But I have a responsibility to them and to this school. I try to keep that in my mind as much as possible and keep a positive outlook.

Of course the loss of the 2,400 GM jobs will hurt the Oklahoma and Oklahoma City economies. However, given the provisions of job banks, the full force of the negative impacts will not be felt until 2008. In the interim, our survey points to solid growth with positive job gains in the months ahead for Oklahoma's economy.

Of all the cities, Oklahoma City was the best geographical match in terms of travel for our teams. If the Hornets do well in Oklahoma City, we expect that they would not return economically hobbled.

None of us are looking to sell our places in New Orleans and buy in Oklahoma City, ... That's not really in anybody's thought process right now. We're all trying to get as comfortable as we can in a short amount of time.

My first hit was back in 1995. I am from Oklahoma and have been fortunate enough to work with a lot ofdifferent artists in the industry.

My exact words were, 'Oklahoma where?' ... I said, 'You've got to be kidding me, David. Do they have an arena?' I knew nothing about Oklahoma City.

My dad was a route salesman, so we were kind of like army brats. We moved wherever the route moved. We spent a lot of time moving all over Oklahoma and Texas. I settled in the Dallas area when I was about 13 years old and have been here ever since.

Now we own that island, ... It's owned by the U.S. Navy and all we're asking is the same thing I do in my state of Oklahoma when we have a live firing range at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Nevada called the other day, and I was contacted by Oklahoma State, so things are going along pretty good.

New Orleans is our home, and we are committed to rebuilding that great city and playing there again. But at the same time, we feel that it's important to acknowledge the way Oklahoma has embraced this team. Wearing an Oklahoma City jersey is the biggest way we can say thank you for a very special season.

Obviously I'm very proud of our players. We needed that. Oklahoma State needed that. I kept telling them all week long that if they would work hard and listen, then good things would happen and they would be rewarded.

Obviously, Brandon pitched a phenomenal game. We obviously made some big mistakes in the eighth inning. But the big question is the bats. This is not Oklahoma and Mississippi State. I'm very disappointed with the offense. (Ryan) Campbell is the only one swinging the bat well.

Right now, I think everybody's got to accept the fact that New Orleans is not ready for this coming season. They're not ready, so we should play in Oklahoma City next year, and then start working and putting everything together to come back.

(NBA commissioner David) Stern and the league put us all in a bind. We understand the situation. We're going to play another year in Oklahoma City, and then after that we have no idea what's going to happen.

I worked with a lot of superintendents. The last four didn't know a damn thing about what they were doing, particularly the guy from Oklahoma City. I'll never get over that guy.

If this team is going to return to Oklahoma City next season, it needs to be because the city of New Orleans is not yet ready. We have not been negotiating for next year, and it wouldn't be appropriate to do so until they determine that they cannot play in New Orleans. And I haven't heard that word yet.

If this should turn out to be about John Doe No. 2, I think it is far from clear that the Oklahoma City bombing case has reached a conclusion in federal court.

I don't have to down-talk Oklahoma. Everyone saw the way we played, saw the way Oklahoma played. It's really pretty self-explanatory.

But what I learned from my experience in living in a community of almost all African-American people, and what I learned from my experience in living in my own community in Oklahoma before the relocation is that poor people have a much, much greater capacity for solving their own problems than most people give them credit for.

I first saw Kelly when he was catching for Baylor, and I was the pitching coach at Oklahoma State. You could see that he had a presence behind the plate. You could tell then that he had a chance to play in the big leagues.

I can't say I agree with the rule, but I got to my hotel at 1 a.m.. I went trick-or-treating, left Oklahoma City at 9 p.m. But I wanted to play in this tournament.

I can tell you that I was blown away; they had 36 states represented last year and right about 300 teams. Because they take over Oklahoma City, they play in all the gyms around the city.

Growing up in Oklahoma the way I did, and being raised the way I was raised by my parents, gave me such a strong foundation to go out into the world and fly, so to speak, the way I was able to do.