Herb Caen Quotes

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

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

San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.

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.'

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

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

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

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.

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

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.

There are a thousand viewpoints in the viewtiful city.

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

We are reorganizing in order to eliminate duplication and redundancy.

Logic is no answer to passion.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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