Kevin Starr Quotes & Sayings

Most dramatically, the Bridge served as an agonizing or exhilarating psychological symbol for the more than 1.2 million servicemen and women who sailed beneath it during World War II and for those soldiers and Marines who saw it from the air as their chartered World Airways or Flying Tiger plane took off from the Oakland Airport, banked westward across both bridges, and headed to Vietnam. Seen upon departure, whether from the channel or the air, the Golden Gate Bridge expressed the life left behind and the fearsome dangers to come. Seen upon return, the Bridge suggested safe harbor, recovery, the joy of life in years that now would be theirs. — Kevin Starr

A city where everyone seemed to live in a bungalow on a broad avenue lined with palm, pepper or eucalyptus trees, where there was never any snow. — Kevin Starr

And that question is, is San Francisco just a boutique city? A theme park? Or do creative forces still coalesce there? — Kevin Starr

Wilde stepped off the train in Oakland wearing a Spanish sombrero, a velvet suit, a puce cravat, yellow gloves, and buckled shoes, and wended his way across the bay to the Bohemian Club, where he is reported to have drunk his hosts under the table. — Kevin Starr

If the Pilgrims had landed in Santa Monica Bay rather than Boston, we'd have six states out here! — Kevin Starr

In the luxuriance of a bowl of grapes set out in ritual display, in a bottle of wine, the soil and sunshine of California reached millions for whom that distant place would henceforth be envisioned as a sun-graced land resplendent with the goodness of the fruitful earth. — Kevin Starr