Quotes & Sayings About The San Francisco Earthquake Of 1906

I chose the San Francisco earthquake because it's very interesting- although maybe that isn't the word you'd have used if you'd actually been in San Francisco on April 18, 1906. You wouldn't have said, "Wow! This is an interesting earthquake!" while you were running for your life to get away from the collapsing buildings or fires that swept across the city afterward. — Belinda Hollyer

Few literary depictions of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake match the intensity and visceral power of those in Flacco's gripping first novel. The author's screenwriting talent shines in this story of the earth's destructive power and humanity's moral depravity. The emerging maniacal personality, revealed in increasingly gruesome and venomous detail, rivals the Ripper.Dickens meets Hannibal Lecter. Brace yourself. — William Bernhardt

Screenwriter Flacco nicely evokes the aftermath of San Francisco's 1906 earthquake in his fiction debut, a novel of suspense. — William Bernhardt

On April 18, 1906, when that earthquake hit San Francisco and took David from her, Vivien began to speak the language of grief. She understood that grief is not neat and orderly; it does not follow any rules. Time does not heal it. Rather, time insists on passing, and as it does, grief changes but does not go away. Sometimes she could actually visualize her grief. It was a wave, a tsunami that came unexpectedly and swept her away. She could see it, a wall of pain that had grabbed hold of her and pulled her under. Some days, she could reach the air and breathe in huge comforting gulps. Some days she barely broke the surface, and still, after all this time, some days it consumed her and she wondered if there was any way free of it. — Ann Hood

I was married once
in San Francisco. I haven't seen her for many years. The great earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed the marriage certificate. There's no legal proof. Which proves that earthquakes aren't all bad. — W.C. Fields

[For] decades, researchers have told us that the link between cataclysm and social disintegration is a myth perpetuated by movies, fiction, and misguided journalism. In fact, in case after case, the opposite occurs: In the earthquake and fire of 1906, Jack London observed: "never, in all San Francisco's history, were her people so kind and courteous as on this night of terror." "We did not panic. We coped," a British psychiatrist recalled after the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings. We often assume that such humanity among survivors, what author Rebecca Solnit has called "a paradise built in hell," is an exception after catastrophes, specific to a particular culture or place. In fact, it is the rule. — Jonathan M. Katz

The Hollywood comedienne Gracie Allen was so secretive about her age that even her husband, the fellow performer George Burns, didn't know her real date of birth. Various sources claim that Allen was born on July 26 in 1894, 1895, 1897, 1902, or 1906. Throughout her life, Allen claimed that her birth certificate was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, even though the earthquake occurred a few months before her alleged birthday. When asked about the discrepancy, Allen allegedly remarked, 'Well, it was an awfully big earthquake. — Richard Wiseman