Herb Caen Quotes

Baffling late-life discovery: Golfers wear those awful clothes on purpose.

A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams.

Americans are pragmatic, relatively uncomplicated, hearty and given to broad humor.

The clock doesn't matter in baseball. Time stands still or moves backwards. Theoretically, one game could go on forever. Some seem to.

The world of Manhattan is small and tightly knit, and the man on top retains a certain humility. He knows how far and fast he can fall by looking at the guy across the street. The view from the $250,000 apartment covers a lot of ground, most of it condemned.

San Franciscans have a bond of self-satisfaction bordering on smugness.

A good column is one that sells paper. It doesn't matter how beautifully it is written and how much you admire the author... if it doesn't sell any papers, it's not a good column. It's a terrible yardstick to use, but in the newspaper business, that's the whole thing.

A city is a crazy concrete jungle whose people at the end of each day somehow make a small step ahead against terrible odds.

It is better to have loved and lost, but only if you have a good attorney.

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.

A city is where you can sign a petition, boo the chief justice, fish off a pier, gaze at a hippopotamus, buy a flower at the corner, or get a good hamburger or a bad girl at 4 A.M. A city is where sirens make white streaks of sound in the sky and foghorns speak in dark grays. San Francisco is such a city.

Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything.

I hope I go to Heaven, and when I do, I'm going to do what every San Franciscan does when he gets there. He looks around and says, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.'

Logic is no answer to passion.

The precise location of heaven on earth has never been established but it may very well be right here

A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.

New Yorkers are stuck in a gloomy mucilage of mutual commiseration.

One day if I do go to heaven...I'll look around and say, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.

Best trumpet: Mike Vax, an alumnus of the Kenton Band, who plays every style with a bright cutting edge, throwing in bop riffs here and there.

The waterfront without the Ferry Tower would be like a birthday cake without a candle.

I sometimes worry about my short attention span, but not for long.

God! I loove this city!

Martinis are like breasts, one isn't enough, and three is too many.

We are reorganizing in order to eliminate duplication and redundancy.

Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?

Satire of satire tends to be self-canceling, and deliberate shock tactics soon lose their ability to shock, especially when they're too deliberate.

There are a thousand viewpoints in the viewtiful city.

The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever.

Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.

All American cars are basically Chevrolets.

We (San Francisco) have football weather during baseball season, and baseball weather during football season.

Just two days in Manhattan and you find yourself looking for a place to wash your handkerchief after you wipe your forehead and it comes away black. Is there a dirtier or more fascinating city anywhere in the land? The answer to both parts of the question has to be positively negative.

I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met.

Old San Francisco - the one so many nostalgics yearn for - had buildings that related well to each other.

When a place advertises itself as 'World Famous,' you may be sure it isn't.

A city is a state - of mind, of taste, of opportunity. A city is a marketplace - where ideas are traded, opinions clash and eternal conflict may produce eternal truths.