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

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.

There are a thousand viewpoints in the viewtiful city.

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

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

All American cars are basically Chevrolets.

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.

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.

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

We are reorganizing in order to eliminate duplication and redundancy.

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

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

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.

One day if I do go to heaven...I'll look around and say, '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.

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

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

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

Philosophically, I don't like doing commercials.

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.'