I still live in Des Moines.

I come from Des Moines. Someone had to.

A high percentage of each of my books has been written in Des Moines.

I'm from the US of A. Born in Des Moines, raised in the New York suburbs.

The first city I ever came to in the states was Des Moines. I was 12 and was in a boys' choir.

If you want to be a comedian, go out. Do a week in Des Moines, Iowa. Try to make those people laugh.

Des Moines is like your typical American city; it's just these concentric circles of malls, built outward from the city.

Most attractive males talk to most attractive women as if they were Rotarians comparing sales percentages in Des Moines.

I grew up in Des Moines. My dad had a house full of books, things like P.G. Wodehouse books and 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte.

Much as I resented having to grow up in Des Moines, it gave me a real appreciation for every place in the world that's not Des Moines.

I bought a bar because we got banned from playing everywhere else. We were too nuts, and everyone was scared of us. It was Des Moines, Iowa, remember.

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.

I come from regional, small-city drag, where if you won Miss Des Moines, Iowa, and you did something bad, or you were being a role model, your crown was taken away.

There are a bunch of places to stay in Des Moines, but I'd suggest finding a place on the west side of town. It's a great urban area that has a lot to offer tourists.

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.

We don't have a constant PR person or anything. That's why people say. 'Oh, you're still together?' Yeah. I'm in Des Moines with the band, not because I'm sightseeing.

I am from Des Moines, Iowa - not even the city but out in the country. I don't have a lot of trappings, I think, in my personality. I'm just a simple person with a silly bone.

I catch Filter in Des Moines doing their soundcheck at a small club. After tearing through a few songs, they spend nearly an hour meeting with fans as part of a radio station meet-and-greet.

Generally, Iowans are Iowans no matter where you go. There are some different issues in Des Moines than in the real rural areas. But I haven't seen any real difference outside of just local issues.

Fads get hot in California. A good idea can come from Des Moines, but it's not going to be anything there. Then it'll hit Venice Beach or Westwood and go all around the country, back to Des Moines.

Whenever I'm in Des Moines, I always make a trip to Manhattan Deli for a sandwich. I spent a lot of time there when I was going to college at Drake, so it's usually my one 'go-to' food stop when I'm in town.

In the end, Obama won, stealing the change message from John Edwards and beating back Hillary Clinton's focus on experience. And the race turned on a remarkable speech Obama gave on the night of Nov. 10, 2007, in Des Moines.

It's hard to pass up a pole vault opportunity here in Des Moines. The crowd was so great when I was at the mall and I was pumped up and I thought technically I was on and I figured where else to open up my outdoor season than here.

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.

One cannot rule out a blizzard in Minnesota after Labor Day, and so when I travel for Thanksgiving or any time in the fall, I am careful to fly into Des Moines instead of Minneapolis and then drive the 200 miles north to my hometown.

When I was studying at the Iowa Writers School, I read a sports writer, Ron Maly, from the Des Moines Register. He was a good sports writer. I became real interested in the contrast between Lute Olson, who was the coach of Iowa at the time, and Ron Maly.

I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.'

How I found out is, I landed in Des Moines from a plane ride back from the Rob Zombie tour. I was, like, 'Okay, cool, I'm home. I can finally get some rest.' Once I landed, I turned my phone on, and my manager rang, and I'm, like, 'Oh, what?' He said, 'Paul Gray just died.'

Consider that the overwhelming majority of those 40,000 near-Earth asteroids are small enough to fit on the parking lot at the mall. And while these rocky runts won't cause Armageddon, they could still flatten such popular hominid hangouts as Manhattan or downtown Des Moines.

Those that have received care here in Des Moines at the VA center or the VA hospital here have said that they do receive good care. However, it's getting into the system - the wait periods. We have to do something about that. The care here has been good. We're not seeing that in other states.

The simple fact of being a human being is you migrate. Many of us move from one place to the other. But even those who don't move, and you stay in the same city, if you were born in Manhattan 70 years ago, you're born in Des Moines 70 years ago, you've lived in the same place for 70 years, the city you live in today is unrecognizable.

In a small town, everyone works together and does life together, and because of that everyone takes care of each other. That's Iowa. Whether it's Des Moines or Sioux Center, Decorah or Davenport, Iowans exhibit those small-town values. They work hard, but not so much for themselves. They're ambitious, but not at the expense of others.

Share This Page