Herb Caen

Herbert Eugene Caen (April 3, 1916 – February 1, 1997) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist working in San Francisco.

Attributed

• Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?
  • Winokur, Jon. The Portable Curmudgeon, p. 174. Plume, 1992. ISBN 0452266688

• The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.
  • Dell, Diana. Memorable Quotations: Humorists, Wits, and Satirists of the Past, p. 54. iUniverse, 2000. ISBN 0595165958

• If I do go to heaven, I'm going to do what every San Franciscan does who goes to heaven. He looks around and says, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.'
  • USA Today, February 16, 2001. "Words from the heart', page D4

• Martinis are like breasts, one isn't enough, and three is too many.
  • Cockburn, Alexander. "Breasts, Martinis and Hitchens". Counterpunch.org, May 6, 2003.

• The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever, but what's wrong with that, really?
  • Caen, Herb. Herb Caen's San Francisco, 1976-1991, page 159. Chronicle Books, 1992. ISBN

• Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything.
  • Byrne, Robert. The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said, page 372. Simon and Schuster, 2012. ISBN 145164891X

• I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.
  • Byrne, Robert. The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said, page 599. Simon and Schuster, 2012. ISBN 145164891X

• A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
  • Editors of the Reader's Digest. Quotable Quotes, page 144. Penguin, 1997 ISBN 1606525956

• Parking is such street sorrow.
  • Byrne, Robert. The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said, page 554. Simon and Schuster, 2012. ISBN 145164891X

• 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.
  • Caen, Herb. "A city is like San Francisco, not a faceless 'burb" S.F. Gate, 2010.