Talk:San Francisco

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Creator comment[edit]

As one could check, this is my first contribution to Wikiquote, having edited extensively at WP. I admit to reading no guidelines first. all the quotes here are from other pages, except for a couple of songlines. I may try to learn more about attribution, and all errors are mine. I imagine this page resembles early pages here.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:11, 28 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to all who have fixed up my efforts. You are greatly appreciated. I will study the edits so i can contribute better.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:37, 1 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Leo Ryan[edit]

Is this page supposed to be for quotes about San Francisco and the Bay Area, or is it for any quote that has anything to do with anyone from the place? The reason I ask is the final three quotes, all of which are rather routine comments about the late congressman Leo Ryan, none of which are noteworthy or memorable as quotes, and none of which mention San Francisco or seem to have anything to do with the place. It seems to me the page will be overwhelmed if it starts including everything ever said about every subject, business, building or person in San Francisco - or worse yet, in the nine counties making up the Bay Area. But I am new to wikiquotes so I am asking, not suggesting. MelanieN (talk) 18:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just removed those 3 quotes, for as you pointed out they actually were not about the city, as such, in any significant way. Welcome to Wikiquote — where there is still much to do in developing the articles here. Blessings ~ Kalki·· 19:57, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Could you do me a favor? Could you take a look at my reference citations [1] [2], and figure out why the url links I provided aren't live in the article? Thanks! --MelanieN (talk) 20:03, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I do not know why those links were not working, but I will now examine the whole article and try to improve the formatting along the line of more standard practices here. ~ Kalki·· 20:51, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I just did some standard formatting along the lines of many articles here. Personally, I usually try to avoid standard citation links, and simply provide simple inline citations that can be read by editors much as they appear to readers. I alphabetized the sourced quotes by author, added one quote by John Steinbeck, did some sourcing, added 2 images and moved the unsourced to the bottom; I have to be leaving soon, but might source some of these or move them here to this page tomorrow. Usually I would simply move them to the talk page, for sourcing by interested editors, but as the article had been neglected so long I see no harm in leaving them on the page a short while longer. ~ Kalki·· 22:01, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced[edit]

moved from page to here for sourcing:

  • San Francisco fucking rules. I am so proud of my home town for legalizing gay marriage, sending gays and lesbians down to the city by the Bay that was built on rock and roll to tie the knot.
  • I left my heart in San Francisco, high on a hill, it calls to me.
    • Douglass Cross AKA Cross Douglass
  • A man should love two cities, its own and San Francisco.
  • And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House.
  • But it's not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time — it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine, with that San Francisco crowd. I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco. Decorators. They got to do something. But we don't have to glorify it. You know one of the reasons fashions have made women look so terrible is because the goddamned designers hate women. Designers taking it out on the women. Now they're trying to get some more sexy things coming on again.
  • The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
  • An interesting thing has happened since San Francisco started granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples: my marriage is just fine! Even though there are thousands of gay and lesbian couples affirming their love for and commitment to each other, my marriage — my affirmation of love and commitment to (my wife) — isn't threatened at all. As a matter of fact, the only people who can really "threaten" my marriage are the two of us.


quotes from the sfba portal[edit]

all these have online sources, but i am not currently interested in sourcing them here, so i leave them here for others (or myself in the future) to source and add:


She took us to see her granddaughter who was teaching in the Dominican convent in San Raphael, we went across the bay on a ferry, that had not changed but Goat Island might just as well not have been there, anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.
~ Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1937, p. 289)


Careful now. We're dealing here with a myth. This city is a point upon a map of fog; Lemuria in a city unknown. Like us, it doesn't quite exist.
~ Ambrose Bierce, on San Francisco


Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills, slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts ... It had been kind to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.
~ John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962)
The extreme geniality of San Francisco's economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States.
~ James Michener


San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth.
~ William Saroyan
It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world
~ Oscar Wilde


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


Baghdad-by-the-Bay
~ Herb Caen, on San Francisco (ca. 1949)


San Francisco, open your Golden Gate

You'll let nobody wait outside your door
San Francisco, here is your wanderin' one
Saying I'll wander no more.

~ "San Francisco", lyrics by Gus Kahn, from the 1936 film San Francisco


When I was in my late 30s, I lit a figure on fire on Baker Beach in San Francisco. It was me, a friend, and maybe eight people, tops. There wasn't any premeditation to it at all. It was really just a product of San Franciscan bohemian milieu.
~ Larry Harvey, on the origins of Burning Man. (Inc. interview, 2012)


Protect me from the wrath of an outraged community if these letters be ever read by American eyes. San Francisco is a mad city - inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty.
~ Rudyard Kipling "In San Francisco", published in Allahabad, India, 1889


Serene, indifferent of Fate,
Thou sittest at the Western Gate;

Upon thy heights so lately won
Still slant the banners of the sun;

Thou seest the white seas strike their tents,
O Warder of two Continents!

And scornful of the peace that flies
Thy angry winds and sullen skies,

Thou drawest all things, small or great,
To thee, beside the Western Gate.

~ "San Francisco, from the Sea", Bret Harte (1836–1902)


For a few months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase of existence -- a butterfly idleness; nothing to do, nobody to be responsible to, and untroubled with financial uneasiness. I fell in love with the most cordial and sociable city in the Union. After the sage-brush and alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was Paradise to me. I lived at the best hotel, exhibited my clothes in the most conspicuous places, infested the opera, and learned to seem enraptured with music which oftener afflicted my ignorant ear than enchanted it, if I had had the vulgar honesty to confess it.
~ Mark Twain, Roughing It (chapter 58)
I went to San Francisco because I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed. If I was to work again at all, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder.
~ Joan Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968 (preface)
San Francisco was where the social hemorrhaging was showing up. San Francisco was where the missing children were gathering and calling themselves 'hippies.'
~ Joan Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)