When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states.
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 grew up in Oklahoma.
I’ll never regret a moment I spent at the University of Oklahoma or my decision to stay home and become a Sooner for life.
It bothered me when Kevin Durant left Oklahoma City.
We didn’t have a lot of live theater in Oklahoma. I didn’t visit New York when I was growing up. I watched movie musicals, and I believed in an idealistic, idyllic version of Broadway.
Governor is not the position to have in Oklahoma. It is the head coach of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State or Tulsa.
Leaving Oklahoma for Illinois is not the no-brainer some think it is.
You write about what you know. It makes everything easier, and also more truthful. In this case, I grew up in Oklahoma, and I grew up in the Cherokee Nation and I’m a member of the Cherokee Tribe. Oddly enough, I know a lot about robots and Oklahoma, and so that’s what comes out in my writing.
My first broadcast partner provided color commentary even though he was totally blind. Leroy McGuirk was a former NCAA Wrestling Champion at Oklahoma State University and long time kingpin of the NWA Junior Heavyweight Division before losing his sight in a car accident in Little Rock in the early 1950s.
My mother lived through the Great Depression. Her family of 11 children pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and moved to wherever there was work at the time. And in rural Oklahoma, that wasn’t easy to find.
Kevin Durant would be welcome back in Oklahoma any time he’s willing to come, and I want to be the first one he calls. He took care of the victims of our tornadoes. He took care of families. Took care of little kids. So, he has a heart, and he’s not a bad ballplayer.
Everybody knows that I like Oklahoma City, and I love being here. I love everybody here.
I’m the only one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that has Final Draft on my computer. Then you show up and go to any coffee shop in L.A., and there are a hundred people your age with Final Draft.
People in Oklahoma don’t wake up every morning wondering what the government is going to do for them.
Playing in a city like Norman, where it’s all about Oklahoma football. A no-brainer for me.
I don’t want to be callous about it, but we all seemed to get over the Oklahoma bombing pretty quickly, and we’re never going to get over 9/11.
I was singing from the time I was 6 years old – at banquets and school shows back in Oklahoma.
The best thing – I say it all the time – what happened at Oklahoma was sitting for a year after I transferred. To sit there and be able to focus on the physical parts of my body. You know, develop, and then the mental side of the game, learning.
Stepping down after 18 years as the head football coach here at Oklahoma, and I feel like I’ve absolutely been the luckiest, most fortunate guy in the world.
Overall, I think any opportunity to expose people to art on a mass level – to have some kid in Oklahoma say to his mother, ‘I want to be an artist’ – is a good thing.
There was a period of time where the two most wanted guys in the state of Oklahoma were me and Josh Heupel. Me for suggesting that you could throw the ball at Oklahoma and in the Big 12. And Josh Heupel for having the temerity to play quarterback and not be able to run faster than 5 flat.
Oklahoma was a dry state, and consequently, there was no liquor laws. And I was able to take advantage of that by playing in nightclubs at the age of 14. It was real handy.
Something called ‘the Oklahoma Standard’ became known throughout the world. It means resilience in the face of adversity. It means a strength and compassion that will not be defeated.
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.
Oklahoma is my home. It’s definitely slower paced than California.
It’s harder, but we’re still finding oil in Oklahoma today. The bar has been raised on startup companies, but it can still be done. Every regulation and every rule limits you, but, yes, it can still be done. That’s the beauty of living in a free country and having the freedom to have an idea and become an entrepreneur.
Oklahoma City’s not real small; it’s got a good amount of the people.
Oklahoma has a respect for our neighbors. That’s the Oklahoma standard.
The people that we met when we lived in Cincinnati, the Midwestern values – I’m from Oklahoma, my wife’s from Green Bay – we felt at home in the year we were here.
Everything I’ve done in my career is a result of growing up in rural Oklahoma, because if I hadn’t had the training from Mama and Daddy to work hard, to do what I’m told, to take directions, to mind and to do a good job at anything I set out to do, then I wouldn’t be where I am today.
With the Gap Band coming from Oklahoma, other artists would tease us by calling us cowboys. We didn’t grow up on a ranch, but we took that style to the stage. We knew that it was corny, but at least it was ours.
I tell people, ‘Have you ever been to Oklahoma? There are a lot of nice people there that do wonderful things.’
When she was 16, my grandmother, Hannie Reed, drove a wagon in the Oklahoma land rush.
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 have deep roots in this Oklahoma soil. It makes me proud.
I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and have known politicians intimately all my life.
We always go to downtown Oklahoma City to look at all the Christmas lights that have been put up… We go to the Christmas Eve service at church, and we always beg my parents to open a present – just one present – on Christmas Eve. We get them to cave.
I shake everybody’s hand before the game, but Oklahoma City, they don’t shake hands. Only some of them, but I don’t think they really shake hands before the game.
When I was competing at Oklahoma in college, I remember always getting a lot of anxiety before wrestling matches. Almost to the point where, ‘Oh my gosh, man, this is a lot.’
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.
You come to Oklahoma to beat Texas. I was born and raised in Austin. They didn’t recruit me. I grew up 15 miles from their campus. I can’t stand them.
In Oklahoma, the girls like the big football players. Girls were more interested in those guys, and I was, like, kind of a drama kid.
More people thought I was strange because I was a teenage novelist, not because I was from Oklahoma. That’s where I got the looks like I was from the zoo.
In fifth grade, I did ‘Oklahoma!,’ but I didn’t get a leading role. I knew the whole play and could sing it already, but they were like, ‘The sixth-grader has to get the lead.’ I was really discouraged.
I’m thankful that my career at Oklahoma was marked with consistent leadership in president David Boren and director of athletics Joe Castiglione.
In some ways, I’m still a kid from Missouri and Oklahoma, and I’m trying to find my way.
To be a world champion from Oklahoma is something that really pushes me.
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.
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.
The people of Oklahoma deserve better. We deserve leadership that’s willing and unafraid to take a public stand against bigotry and bullying.
Carrie Underwood was just a small-town Oklahoma girl with big dreams in 2005 when she competed on the fourth season of ‘American Idol.’ She is one of the few true ‘American Idol’ success stories and went on to have incredible career success.
I remember embracing our championship tradition, telling our players that this is what we should expect to be; this is what Oklahoma is supposed to be. And we’re going to do all we can to be that. And if we don’t, there will be no excuses. You either do or you don’t.
When I was at Oklahoma, I didn’t think it could get any bigger than that.
Oklahoma is very entrepreneurial.
My time at Oklahoma State and in Stillwater has been amazing. I met some amazing people, got to play with some great guys and great teammates, and I built some strong relationships and bonds there.
Our work in investigating the Oklahoma City bombing reflected some of the very best the FBI has to offer.
Are there any swamps in Oklahoma? Yes, there is. It’s called Tulsa.
I grew up a wrestler; for a long time in Oklahoma I was a wrestler.
I’m from Oklahoma. I mean, you can’t have good hair in Oklahoma. That’s why everyone wears hats. The wind just messes it up.
I was born in Oklahoma.
I’ve just been so blessed in my journey. Fat kid from Oklahoma, buddy – Southern accent and Bell’s palsy, becoming a broadcaster and hanging around a fickle business for 40 years. You wonder how in the hell that happened. It was somebody’s plan.
