“A library is never -- for lovers of the written word -- simply a place for conserving or storing books but rather a sort of living creature with a personality and even moods which we should understand and learn to live with.”

“North Carolina has a monument to [Peter Francisco], and no one knows that. That's the kind of stuff that drives me.”

“The San Francisco skyline sparkles in the distance, the bay spread out before it like a shark-infested welcome mat.”

“The worst have scraped out the mantle of the best and wear it around as something real. It takes no genius to see that. But I moved to San Francisco because the masquerade of kindly gestures is, at least, kind. And it remains kind. And all the people who would sit back and comment on the garishness of the costumes, the hollowness of the dialogue, the lack of divine conviction, well, all those people are either dead or fifteen years old.”

“...dangers, to Francisco, were merely opportunities for another brilliant performance; there were no battles he could lose, no enemies to beat him.”

“It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.”

“However, in this city (San Francisco) that prides itself in being so progressive, it feels like we need to go back and master something both simple as well as incredibly complex – each other. We can learn to embrace our differences without making them a joke or a spectacle.”

“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”

“The city of San Francisco engulfed their view through the front windshield. The dazzling light of the late morning sun transformed every glass and metal surface into a silvery mirage.”

“I have seen purer liquors, better segars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtesans here in San Francisco than in any other place I have ever visited; and it is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish the best bad things that are available in America.”

“Señor d.‘Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”“Just exactly what it deserves.”“Oh, how cruel!”“Don’t you believe in the operation of the moral law, madame?” Francisco asked gravely. “I do.”