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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.

Herb Caen

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Herb Caen
Age: 80 †
Born: 1916
Born: April 3
Died: 1997
Died: February 1
Journalist
Sacramento
California
Herbert Eugene Caen
States
City
May
Eternal
Ideas
Taste
Traded
Mind
Produce
Clash
Cities
Marketplace
Opinion
Truths
State
Opinions
Opportunity
Conflict

More quotes by Herb Caen

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New Yorkers are stuck in a gloomy mucilage of mutual commiseration.
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The clock doesn't matter in baseball. Time stands still or moves backwards. Theoretically, one game could go on forever. Some seem to.
Herb Caen
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The clock doesn?t matter in baseball.
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The waterfront without the Ferry Tower would be like a birthday cake without a candle.
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When a place advertises itself as 'World Famous,' you may be sure it isn't.
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Baffling late-life discovery: Golfers wear those awful clothes on purpose.
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Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?
Herb Caen
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Martinis are like breasts, one isn't enough, and three is too many.
Herb Caen
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Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything.
Herb Caen
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Old San Francisco - the one so many nostalgics yearn for - had buildings that related well to each other.
Herb Caen
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The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever.
Herb Caen
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I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met.
Herb Caen
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We are reorganizing in order to eliminate duplication and redundancy.
Herb Caen
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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.
Herb Caen
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Americans are pragmatic, relatively uncomplicated, hearty and given to broad humor.
Herb Caen
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I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.
Herb Caen
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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.
Herb Caen
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San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
Herb Caen
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God! I loove this city!
Herb Caen
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You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding hundred dollar bills.
Herb Caen