Welcome to our collection of quotes by Herb Caen. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Herb Caen
Herbert Eugene Caen (April 3, 1916 – February 1, 1997) was a San Francisco humorist and journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, and offbeat puns and anecdotes—"A continuous love letter to San Francisco"—appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle for almost sixty years (excepting a relatively brief defection to The San Francisco Examiner) and made him a household name throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
"The secret of Caen's success", wrote the editor of a rival publication, was:
his outstanding ability to take a wisp of fog, a chance phrase overheard in an elevator, a happy child on a cable car, a deb in a tizzy over a social reversal, a family in distress and give each circumstance the magic touch that makes a reader an understanding eyewitness of the day's happenings.
A special Pulitzer Prize called him the "voice and conscience" of San Francisco.
The precise location of heaven on earth has never been established but it may very well be right here.
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.
We (San Francisco) have football weather during baseball season, and baseball weather during football season.
All American cars are basically Chevrolets.
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.
It is better to have loved and lost, but only if you have a good attorney.
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.
The waterfront without the Ferry Tower would be like a birthday cake without a candle.
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
I sometimes worry about my short attention span, but not for long.
We are reorganizing in order to eliminate duplication and redundancy.
The number of foggy days over the city is never reported, reportedly. But take it from me-- there's enough to satisfy everyone, and dissatisfy somebody.
Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?
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.
Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.
The only way to fight a thing like 50 is to stay au courant if it kills you.
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 a crazy concrete jungle whose people at the end of each day somehow make a small step ahead against terrible odds.
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.
Americans are pragmatic, relatively uncomplicated, hearty and given to broad humor.
Satire of satire tends to be self-canceling, and deliberate shock tactics soon lose their ability to shock, especially when they're too deliberate.
Logic is no answer to passion.
When a place advertises itself as 'World Famous,' you may be sure it isn't.
Old San Francisco -- the one so many nostalgics yearn for -- had buildings that related well to each other.
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.
New Yorkers are stuck in a gloomy mucilage of mutual commiseration.
San Franciscans have a bond of self-satisfaction bordering on smugness.
The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.
A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.
A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams.
Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything.
The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever.
I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met.