Quotations about Seattle, Wash.

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"What do they call this--Bar Mitzvah? Where you come out as a man? I think Seattle was kind of like that for me. . .all of a sudden I had to become a man. There were a lot of faces around Seattle, and I tried to make mine familiar so I could keep working. . .I could see that in a city like Seattle--a place which was more sophisticated and open than I was used to--my act was going to pay off." - Ray Charles

From a New Yorker cartoon about Seattle: "They're backpacky, but nice."

"Our grandfather started a sawmill and helped to clear-cut Ballard. And he gained wealth here. He was a very aggressive businessman. . .Now our generation is very much into nonprofit and here we are operating a foundation giving away as much money as we can to save the forests that my grandfather did not cut." - Harriett Bullitt, former co-owner of King Broadcasting

"Many a morning in June, I've come upon slugs three feet up on my asparagus plants, rocking back and forth in the feathery foliage like a sailor relaxing on a hammock." - Jim Hollman

"When somebody associates someone with being a resident of the Pacific Northwest, there's a lot of Paul Bunyan notions of people raising Cain out in the hills." - Bruce Pavitt, co-founder of Sub Pop Records

"A Seattle native is a Californian, Minnesotan, or Iowan who has lived in Seattle more than six months and knows how to pronounce Sequim (or Puyallup)." - Jean Godden, Seattle columnist and former city council member

"I like Californians. When I'm down there." Emmett Watson, Seattle author, newspaperman

"The real misconception that outsiders have about Seattle's rain is that it's a bad unpleasant thing. True Northwesterners, on the other hand, like the misty, foggy weather, with its beautiful moody promise of regeneration." - Bart Becker

"It will stop raining, won't it?" - Richard Eberhard, a poet on a 1967 visit to Seattle

"Despite what the fish and game department likes us to believe about fishing, gardening is easily the number one avocation in the Pacific Northwest. . .We may treat the local Orca pods as wildlife celebrities, we may reinvent the spotted owl as our symbol of wildness, we may expend vast amounts of money, time, and self-respect trying to get close enough to grab a salmon under the gills, but it is the slugs we know best. And most often. Slugs: our primary window into the heart of the wilderness." - Jim Hollman, Seattle writer

"A newcomer to Seattle arrives on a rainy day. She gets up the next morning and it's raining. It continues to pour for the rest of the week. Leaning out her apartment window she sees a little boy playing on the stoop below and asks, 'Hey, kid, does it ever stop raining around here?' The kid looks up at her and calls back, 'How should I know? I'm only six.' - a joke that made the rounds a few years ago
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