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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.