Seattle Quotes: Emerald City Insights

"If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism"

Hunter S. Thompson, Journalist

"As far as the grunge thing, there are three bands from Seattle that I would call true grunge"

Adam Jones, Musician

"One of the first bands to break out of Seattle was Heart"

Layne Staley, Musician

"So when we finally settled down outside of Seattle I felt totally uncomfortable with that idea"

Josh Lucas, Actor

"Whenever Elvin Jones comes to Seattle I try to go catch him"

Matt Cameron, Musician

"My parents were laborers so we lived on South Park, which was a low-income region of Seattle. You had a choice - you either joined or formed a gang or you let others bully you"

Jack Bowman, Actor

"I grew up in Colorado - went back there, tried to heal myself and grow and learn, then got a call that David Lynch wanted me to fly back to Seattle so he could meet me for Twin Peaks"

Sheryl Lee, Actor

"I was born in Everett; I went through grade school in Everett, high school in Seattle"

Dorothy Malone, Actress

"I grew up in Seattle, but I always knew I wanted to leave"

David Guterson, Author

"My father is a practicing criminal law attorney in the Seattle area"

David Guterson, Author

"Last Friday night, I Twitted a photograph of myself that I intended to send as a direct message as part of a joke to a woman in Seattle. Once I realized I posted to Twitter I panicked, I took it down and said that I had been hacked. I then continued with that story, to stick to that story which was a hugely regrettable mistake"

Anthony Weiner, Politician

"I was never the class clown or anything like that. When I was growing up and doing theatre in Seattle I was always doing very dramatic work. Now I can't get a dramatic role to save my life!"

Anna Faris, Actress

"The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it"

Frances Farmer, Actress

"My wife and I just prefer Seattle. It's a beautiful city. Great setting. You open your front door in the morning and the air smells like pine and the sea, as opposed to bus exhaust"

Ron Reagan, Journalist

"It felt like being in the center of the world, and I felt like I was a witness to history and I knew that the whole world was watching on television. So, I could feel the collective consciousness of the world focused on this little strip of land called Seattle"

Krist Novoselic, Musician

"All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work"

Dave Grohl, Musician

"And Seattle isn't really crazy anymore. It's a big dot-com city"

Krist Novoselic, Musician

"I attended schools in Seattle through the University of Washington, from which I was graduated in 1931. I spent the next year at Northwestern University"

George Stigler, Economist

"If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You're dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle"

Quincy Jones, Musician

"I learned so much about playing and touring being on the road and in the studio with Jeff, but I'd always played a lot of gigs in Seattle even prior to joining the Fusion"

Kenny G, Musician

"When I moved to Seattle, I was hanging out with kids who had done drugs, had sex a million times. I look at them now and realize their childhood was taken away"

Jeff Ament, Musician

"I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home"

Quincy Jones, Musician

"I'm looking forward to providing the men of Seattle with an evening where they can kick back, light up a cigar and enjoy a night to themselves. Women, we can't technically keep you out, but please stay at home"

Tom Leykis, Entertainer

"It's still fun to come to games, and it's still fun to be in the Seattle crowd"

Steve Largent, Athlete

"In January of 1995, my family and I moved to Seattle. Pearl Jam did the first of their live radio broadcasts, Monkey Wrench Radio, along with many other Seattle musicians"

Jack Irons, Musician

"Nirvana was like that- Nirvana was like the only band to come out of that- it was like the same thing, Seattle was like this whole scene and it was like this big scene that was thrust upon America"

Jon Fishman, Musician

"I bought my first camera in Seattle, Washington. Only paid about seven dollars and fifty cents for it"

Gordon Parks, Photographer

"It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist, that I learned economic theory"

Douglass North, Economist