Seattle Quotes

“Don’t cry,” he whispers. “Just let me do what I do best, baby. Let me take care of you.” “It’s hard for me to let people in, Leo.” “I’m already in,” he reminds me. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
― Kristen Proby, Rock with Me

“All those ninnies have it wrong. The best thing about Seattle is the weather. The world over, people have ocean views. But across our ocean is Bainbridge Island, an evergreen curb, and over it the exploding, craggy, snow-scraped Olympics. I guess what I'm saying: I miss it, the mountains and the water.”
― Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

“Switters was actually quite fond of Seattle's weather, and not merely because of it's ambivalence. He liked it's subtle, muted qualities and the landscape that those qualities encouraged if not engendered: vistas that seemed to have been sketched with a sumi brush dipped in quicksilver and green tea. It was fresh, it was clean, it was gently primal, and mystically suggestive.”
― Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

“The sky in Seattle is so low, it felt like God had lowered a silk parachute over us. Every feeling I ever knew was up in that sky. Twinkling joyous sunlight; airy, giggle cloud wisps; blinding columns of sun. Orbs of gold, pink. flesh, utterly cheesy in their luminosity. Gigantic puffly clouds, welcoming, forgiving, repeating infinitely across the horizon as if between mirrors; and slices of rain, pounding wet misery in the distance now, but soon on us, and in another part of the sky, a black stain, rainless.”
― Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

“Here in the corner attic of America, two hours’ drive from a rain forest, a desert, a foreign country, an empty island, a hidden fjord, a raging river, a glacier, and a volcano is a place where the inhabitants sense they can do no better, nor do they want to.”
― Timothy Egan, The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest

“We need a new ethic of place, one that has room for salmon and skyscrapers, suburbs and wilderness, Mount Rainier and the Space Needle, one grounded in history.”
― Matthew Klingle, Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle

“Seattle, the mild green queen: wet and willing, cedar-scented, and crowned with slough grass, her toadstool scepter tilted toward Asia, her face turned ever upward in the rain; the sovereign who washes her hands more persistently than the most fastidious proctologist.”
― Tom Robbins, Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life

“Birds will give you a window, if you allow them. They will show you secrets from another world– fresh vision that, though it is avian, can accompany you home and alter your life. They will do this for you even if you don't know their names– though such knowing is a thoughtful gesture. They will do this for you if you watch them.”
― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds

“It is a second-generation Seattle-scene record label; all of its artists are young people who came to Seattle after they graduated college in search of the legendary Seattle music scene and discovered that it didn't really exist--it was just a couple of dozen guys who sat around playing guitar in one another's basements--and so who were basically forced to choose between going home in ignominy or fabricating the Seattle Music scene of their imagination from whole cloth. This led to the establishment of any number of small clubs, and the foundation of many bands, that were not rooted in any kind of authentic reality whatsoever but merely reflected the dreams and aspiration of pan-global young adults who had flocked to Seattle on the same chimera hunt.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“To know Seattle one must know its waterfront. It is a good waterfront, not as busy as New York's, not as self-consciously colorful as San Francisco's, not as exotic as New Orleans, but a good, honest, working waterfront with big gray warehouses and trim fishing boats and docks that smell of creosote, and sea gulls and tugs and seafood restaurants and beer joints and fish stores--a waterfront where you can hear foreign languages and buy shrunken heads and genuine stuffed mermaids, where you can watch the seamen follow the streetwalkers and the shore patrol follow the sailors, where you can stand at an open-air bar and drink clam nectar, or sit on a deadhead and watch the water, or go to an aquarium and look at an octopus.”
― Murray Morgan, Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle

“To read Hotel Angeline is to celebrate how this diverse group of writers (and readers, all of them) can pool their talents and expertise to come up with such an entertaining and soul-satisfying novel.”
― Nancy Pearl, Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices

“Merry Christmas. His would be without the Merry for sure.”
― Debbie Macomber, Merry and Bright

“The Seattle Times reported in 2018 that the median net worth of white Seattleites is $456,000. The median net worth of black Seattleites—and here you should probably beep-boop-boop that therapist again—is $23,000. White net worth in my city is twenty times that of black net worth. If you are one of those people who believes that racism is a thing of the past, never existed at all, or is defined simply as one person being mean to another person, you are claiming that white people genuinely earn—through ability alone, because anything else would be a systemic advantage—twenty times as much as black people. White people are twenty times as good at their jobs, twenty times as skilled, twenty times as deserving. If you believe that, you are racist. That is racism. (Congratulations! I don’t know if you’ve heard, but 2019 is a great time for you guys.)”
― Lindy West

“A sideways rain quickly soaked the pair as
they made their way across the street toward a
small diner. Inside, the smell of coffee permeated
the air and Benny Goodman’s band could be
heard from a radio in the corner.”
― Dawn Klinge, Sorrento Girl

“This is a temporary setback, not a failure. Let it be a challenge for you. If you want to be a teacher, your can do it. If you want to be a wife and a mother, you can do that too. If you want to be a teacher, a wife, and a mother, all at the same time, try your hardest!”
― Dawn Klinge, Sorrento Girl

“He knew the way she liked her coffee, her favorite flowers--pink roses--and the meaning of countless things, like the way she straightened up to her full height and raised her left eyebrow when she was holding back on something she wanted to say.”
― Dawn Klinge, Sorrento Girl

“Outside, the rains had come, the rains that like a blizzard of guppies would pelt the creaky old house until spring. There is no weeping that can compete with the northwest rains.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“As far as coffee table books go, this one's slow roasted like Seattle's finest. It even comes with FREE refills that you drink through your eyes.”
― Jarod Kintz, I design saxophone music in blocks, like Stonehenge

“יועד לוגם מהכוס ומעווה את פניו. ״חרא קפה.״
״בפעם הבאה תלך לקפה מול הספרייה,״ היא מציעה לו טיפ של מקומיים. רק לפני שנה פתחו אותו, וכל הקמפוס מדבר עליו: כמו בניו יורק, כמו בסן פרנסיסקו, בסיאטל: קלייה עצמית, מיקרו־זנים. היא עצמה ניסתה כמה פעמים והתביישה לומר שהקפה היה לה מר וחמוץ.
הוא זורק את הכוס לפח זבל שעומד בקצה המסדרון. ״לשם הלכתי.״”
― Maya Arad, המורה לעברית

“Paul was focused on Ann, alone. “Would
you like to dance?”
The dreaded question. Not because the person
asking was dreadful. Quite the contrary. She
wasn’t immune to his charms, but Ann liked to
feel competent and in control. Dancing was not
going to make her feel that way.”
― Dawn Klinge, Sorrento Girl

“Seattle is sitting in summer's dying moments, which makes the city's usual tone of grey seem all the more suffocating.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“We all came to Seattle in hopes of building better lives. No one said we wouldn't have to struggle first.”
― Regina Scott, Instant Frontier Family

“Even on that first, clear afternoon, the dark earth between the gravel paths and the deep green of towering pine, fir, and spruce trees contained the memory of recent snow and rain. The ocean at the far end of the camp was the color of slate.

Everything Siobhan was wearing was brand new: a black fleece she’d chosen for its silver heart-shaped zipper pull, her first pair of hiking boots, even her underwear. She felt a thrilling, terrifying dissolution of self. She was far from her parents, her classmates, anyone who had ever known here. She was curious to find out who she would be.”
― Kim Fu, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

“You know you're from Seattle when even amid perhaps the worst crisis you've ever faced, you can still appreciate a sunny day.”
― Melanie A. Smith, The Safeguarded Heart

“The object of all who came to Oregon in early times was to avail themselves of the privilege of a donation claim, and my opinion to-day is that every man and woman fully earned and merited all they got, but we have a small class of very small people here now who have no good word for the old settler that so bravely met every danger and privation, and by hard toil acquired, and careful economy, saved the means to make them comfortable during the decline of life. These, however are degenerate scrubs, too cowardly to face the same dangers that our pioneer men and women did, and too lazy to perform an honest day’s work if it would procure them a homestead in paradise. They would want the day reduced to eight hours and board thrown in.”
― Arthur A. Denny, Pioneer Days on Puget Sound

“Why did the city's most notable attraction have to be so "bonery?”
― Jason June, Jay's Gay Agenda

“Hello Seattle, hello COVID-19.”
― Steven Magee

“I still can't believe how much I can see of the woods. Each branch and leaf is lit up as if it's beneath a spotlight. This place feels like a fantasy, like any minute now we'll cross paths with a group of fairies, and Emma will simply wave hello at them, used to the sight.”
― Adi Alsaid, North of Happy

“For all y'all talking about "we can't have lawlessness": What do you call it when cops murder without consequence? When a mayor violates the municipal code? Shouldn't the people in power be held to highest level of accountability when it comes to following the law?

(7/1/2020 on Twitter)”
― Nikkita Oliver

“The first religious service in Seattle was by Bishop Demers, a Catholic, in 1852. The next was by Rev. Benjamin F. Close, a Methodist, who came to Olympia in the spring or early summer of 1853, and made several visits to Seattle during the summer and fall, and the same season Rev. J. F. DeVore located at Steilacoom. C. D. Boren donated two lots for a Methodist Episcopal church, and in November, 1853, Rev. D. E. Blaine and wife arrived.”
― Arthur A. Denny, Pioneer Days on Puget Sound