Herb Caen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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Quotes by Herb Caen