San Pedro Quotes

These were my countrymen, these were the new Californians. With their bright polo shirts and sunglasses, they were in paradise, they belonged. But down on Main Street, down on Towne and San Pedro, and for a mile on lower Fifth Street were the tens of thousands of others; they couldn't afford sunglasses or a four-bit polo shirt and they hid in the alleys by day and slunk off to flop houses by night. A cop won't pick you up for vagrancy in Los Angeles if you wear a fancy polo shirt and a pair of sunglasses. But if there is dust on your shoes and that sweater you wear is thick like the sweaters they wear in the snow countries, he'll grab you. So get yourselves a polo shirt boys, and a pair of sunglasses, and white shoes, if you can. Be collegiate. It'll get you anyway. After a while, after big doses of the Times and the Examiner, you too will whoop it up for the sunny south. You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semi-tropical nights will reek of romance, you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.
As for the folks back home, you can lie to them, because they hate the truth anyway, they won't have it, because soon or late they want to come out to paradise, too. ~ John Fante

I lived in San Pedro, California, which is, you know, on the west side of California, and it's where many, many Japanese lived. ~ Yuri Kochiyama

IT WAS A HOT AND MUGGY DAY AS I looked up in the powder blue sky that covered the Port of San Pedro. The Bell helicopter circled above like a dragonfly in my Grandma Cholé's rose garden. I don't know if it was the unbearable humidity or the whoop- whoop- whoop of the chopper's rotor blades as they sliced through the air, but something was affecting me. ~ Jose N Harris

Perspective shifted on why it must 'hurt to heal', and a series of questions kept coming to mind. I found myself wondering if these medicines always 'hurt', or do they hurt so much now to show us how separate we are from nature? Perhaps these 'revelations in pain' are necessary in order for a personal apocalpyse to occur so you may have a shift in perception, and a greater understanding of your role in the whole? To realize that we are not foreign from nature, nature is where we come from and where we return to. ~ Jennifer Sodini

Most ballerinas take their first ballet class when they are 5 or 6 years old. I was 13 when I took mine on the basketball court of the San Pedro Boys & Girls Club in California. ~ Misty Copeland

In a whodunnit, when a detective hears that Sir Somebody Smith has been stabbed thirty-six times on a train or decapitated, they accept it as a quite natural occurrence. They pack their bags and head off to ask questions, collect clues, ultimately to make an arrest. But I wasn't a detective. I was an editor - and, until a week ago, not a single one of my acquaintances had managed to die in an unusual and violent manner. Apart from my own parents and Alan, I hardly knew anyone who had died at all. It's strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us - the crime or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable? I made a mental note to check out Alan's sales figures in San Pedro Sula in Honduras (the murder capital of the world). It might be that they didn't read him at all. ~ Anthony Horowitz

I was the first person in my family who was ever interested in dance, or fine art of any kind for that matter - I came from a very humble beginning in San Pedro, California. ~ Misty Copeland

I grew up poor in San Pedro, California, sleeping on the floor of shady motels with my five siblings and not always sure when or where I'd get my next meal. ~ Misty Copeland

Lauren: Whatever happens do not break up the band!!
Me: Got it.
Lauren: But break his heart. He wrote San Pedro after what's-her-name cheated on him. That album was BRILLIANT!
Me: Promise to leave him a broken quivering mess.
Lauren: That's the spirit. ~ Kylie Scott

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails ... and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.
- Anonymous Curse on Book Theives from the Monaster of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain ~ Anatole Broyard

The way the San Francisco Bay's sun rises and falls ... It's splendor beauty is God's gift to us all. It's glorious colors brings great joy to me ... wish forever there my love and I could be. Peace and love in side of me it always brings. For whenever I see it's majestic sky ... My Heart Sings! ~ Timothy Pina

Morrell, ever a true comrade, too had a splendid brain. In fact, and I who am about to die have the right to say it without incurring the charge of immodesty, the three best minds in San Quentin from the Warden down were the three that rotted there together in solitary. And here at the end of my days, reviewing all that I have known of life, I am compelled to the conclusion that strong minds are never docile. The stupid men, the fearful men, the men ungifted with passionate rightness and fearless championship - these are the men who make model prisoners. I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, Ed Morrell, and I were not model prisoners. ~ Jack London

a flesh-and-blood waiter and therefore as rare in San Francisco as a flying horse, ~ Christie Golden

Pandas and rain forests are never mentioned when it comes to the millions of people taking joyrides in their Range Rovers. Rather, it's the little things we're strong-armed into conserving. At a chain coffee bar in San Francisco, I saw a sign near the cream counter that read NAPKINS COME FROM TREES - CONSERVE! In case you missed the first sign, there was a second one two feet away, reading YOU WASTE NAPKINS - YOU WASTE TREES!!! The cups, of course, are also made of paper, yet there's no mention of the mighty redwood when you order your four-dollar coffee. The guilt applies only to those things that are being given away for free. ~ David Sedaris

Half of San Antonio's population is of Mexican descent; the other half just eats that way. ~ Mike Greenberg

La Mancha is a very macho, chauvinistic society. I saw very clearly that my life had to be in Madrid, and I liberated myself from my mum and dad after high school. ~ Pedro Almodovar

She dreamed of driving off bridges: into a lake beneath some twisting highway of her youth, into the reservoir on the country road to home, into the San Francisco Bay. ~ Shannon Celebi

I think California has some very good looking women ... I know Stephanie Seymour is from San Diego, and I know Josie Maran - who's my very good friend - she's from Northern California. So I think California produces some good looking women, for sure. ~ Marisa Miller

In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government. ~ Pedro Almodovar

The past
the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Dear J:
I feel lucky that I didn't fuck you the first time we met in Houston, but luckier that I didn't fuck you the last time we met in San Francisco. this is the answer to your letter even though I don't know if you'll ever read it. the words are yours but I'll get credit for the poem. you see, it could never have worked, the way I am.
B. ~ Charles Bukowski

Teach me your way of looking at people:
as you glanced at Peter after his denial,
as you penetrated the heart of the rich young man
and the hearts of your disciples.
I would like to meet you as you really are,
since your image changes those with whom you
come into contact.
Remember John the Baptist's first meeting with you?
And the centurion's feeling of unworthiness?
And the amazement of all those who saw miracles
and other wonders?
How you impressed your disciples,
the rabble in the Garden of Olives,
Pilate and his wife
and the centurion at the foot of the cross. . . .
I would like to hear and be impressed
by your manner of speaking,
listening, for example, to your discourse in the
synagogue in Capharnaum
or the Sermon on the Mount where your audience
felt you "taught as one who has authority. ~ Pedro Arrupe

Besides,love is only a feeling. ~ Christina Westover

No disrespect to your people, but we're not going to San Francisco here. I ain't wearing any flowers in my hair, Dean said. ~ Christa Faust

Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

14. I say this in order to make it clear that the one who would go to God relying on natural ability and reasoning will not be very spiritual. There are some who think that by pure force and the activity of the senses, which of itself is lowly and no more than natural, they can reach the strength and height of the supernatural spirit. One does not attain to this peak without surpassing and leaving aside the activity of the senses. ~ San Juan De La Cruz

I learned that the only thing more unifying to a group of Miamians than a hurricane is the fear that a homeless clinic might move into their neighborhood. ~ Pedro Jose Greer Jr.

Sato said softly, "Bottom-san, please to understand, if you call me 'motherfucker' again, I shall be forced to kill you. ~ Dan Simmons

California and Italy are about the same size. Roughly speaking, California contains about 150,000 square miles, Italy about 120,000 square miles. They are not dissimilar in physical characteristics. They extend over a long distance from north to south, and each has an extensive coastline. Each is destitute of coal mines. Each produces large quantities of wheat. Each produces citrus and other fruits, olives, wine, and raisins. The climate is about the same, although California's is superior. They are in about the same zone. Rome lies in about the same latitude as San Francisco. Our state is one of the richest and most fertile of all the United States. Yet suppose that California were as populous as Italy - someday it will be. Suppose it had a population of millions. Could California, even with its vast resources, support an army of a quarter of a million men as Italy does? She could do it only as Italy does, by grinding the people into the dust with oppressive taxation. ~ Jerome Hart

Christians have no business playing around with ideas of the devil as a fun-loving, beer-swigging guy who just wants you to have a good time. ~ Pedro Okoro

In the great Bible passage on spiritual warfare, the word stand appears four times, while the word translated wrestle, battle, fight, or struggle appears only once. In essence, God is asking you to spend the majority of your time in warfare standing! ~ Pedro Okoro

The government of Puerto Rico has every right to hold a plebiscite, to consult the people of Puerto Rico regarding their wishes. But the truth is that for a change in the status of Puerto Rico to happen, you need both Congress and Puerto Rico agreeing to it. ~ Pedro Pierluisi

These people, as far as I can see, do not congregate in the notorious centers of the movement, like the North Beach in San Francisco or Greenwich Village, or Venice, California. ~ Alan Watts

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco ~ Mark Twain

By helping others, you will learn how to help yourselves. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

All those summer drives, no matter where I was going, to a person, a project, an adventure, or home, alone in the car with my social life all before and behind me, I was suspended in the beautiful solitude of the open road, in a kind of introspection that only outdoor space generates, for inside and outside are more intertwined than the usual distinctions allow. The emotion stirred by the landscape is piercing, a joy close to pain when the blue is deepest on the horizon or the clouds are doing those spectacular fleeting things so much easier to recall than to describe. Sometimes I thought of my apartment in San Francisco as only a winter camp and home as the whole circuit around the West I travel a few times a year and myself as something of a nomad (nomads, contrary to current popular imagination, have fixed circuits and stable relationships to places; they are far from beign the drifters and dharma bums that the word nomad often connotes nowadays). This meant that it was all home, and certainly the intense emotion that, for example, the sequence of mesas alongside the highway for perhaps fifty miles west of Gallup, N.M., and a hundred miles east has the power even as I write to move me deeply, as do dozens of other places, and I have come to long not to see new places but to return and know the old ones more deeply, to see them again. But if this was home, then I was both possessor of an enchanted vastness and profoundly alienated. ~ Rebecca Solnit

It's very difficult to have any faith in the sincerity of the SLORC about stamping out drug production if they find it so easy to forgive a drug baron whom at one time they said they would never, never forgive and would never, never regard as anything but a drug runner. The SLORC is far more aggressive in its attitude toward the National League for Democracy than against drug traffickers. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

If I wanted to pitch that bad, I probably would. But I don't think I'm in that stage. ~ Pedro Martinez

I run in London, in San Francisco - any city that's got a waterfront or park. ~ Danny Meyer

Every second I'm with you, I feel like a better person. You make me believe it's possible that I can move on from every mistake I've ever made and live in your world." - HEW ~ Michelle Warren

It is the love of ordinary people, in Burma, in Japan or anywhere else in the world, for justice and peace and freedom that is our surest defense against the forces of unreason and extremism ... ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

I've played D&D for years. I'm a comic book guy. Comic-Con in San Diego is nerd Christmas for me. ~ Brian Posehn

America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.
Everywhere else is Cleveland. ~ Tennessee Williams

San Diego shaped me a lot. The visual landscapes, the emotional panoramas, the teachers and mentors I had from the third grade through San Diego High - it's all a big part of the poetry fountain that I continue to drink from. ~ Juan Felipe Herrera

The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

thunder should have rumbled in a Robert Mitchum sky that promised far worse before long. I should have seen tree branches whipping. Heard the plash of drops on stone, sprung shutters whapbapbapping. But the gods had decided to turn on the sun and set it in a Spielberg sky with a thumbs-up sign from Disney. Hello to San Francisco, where the party never stops. ~ Reb MacRath

I'd always wanted to live in San Francisco, and my circumstances never permitted it. I'm so happy I made the move. ~ Mitch Kapor

There,' said Wednesday, 'is one who "does not have the faith and will not have the fun". Chesterton. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out onto the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise? Find out how many passers-by know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the Dawn? Let's see - I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them, toes; for every twenty who don't know you spend a night making love to me. And the odds are certainly in your favour here - this is San Francisco, after all. There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets. ~ Neil Gaiman

We need to create schools that are organized to meet the needs of the kids they serve instead of what we've been doing. We expect kids to adjust to the schools and if they can't, we say something is wrong with the child - instead of focusing on engagement and nurturing the love of learning in kids. ~ Pedro Noguera

the past year or so that make me think Leigh Anne might be having an affair." "What kind of things?" "She's always been a big shopper, but now she's going several times a week. Always going to Austin or San Antone. I know she does actually go shopping sometimes, because she comes home with bags of stuff. Other times, nothing. She says she was just looking." "Well, you know, women do that. They can shop for ten hours and come home with one item that ~ Ben Rehder

I have chosen to seek election to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and not reelection to Congress. ~ Gloria Negrete McLeod

I worked at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, lived there for three years, and lived in Baltimore for 12 years. ~ Wendell Pierce

In San Paulo I went to the movies and by the time I left the theater there was a mob at the exit. I had never been in that kind of situation when we weren't on tour and there was a whole bunch of security. I'm a little dude, and out of nowhere to have 50 or 60 people come running towards me when I'm jut with my friend, it was kind of scary. ~ Kevin McHale

I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for political and practical reasons. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi