1999: The Year in Quotes

‘It’s a black eye on your city.’ -Mayor Richard Riordan, on the pornography film industry, concentrated in the Valley.

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‘This says, “Girls matter.” ’ -Paula Pearlman, attorney for the West Valley Girls Softball League, on the settlement of a suit charging Los Angeles with failing to provide equal facilities for girls’ sports.

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‘I saw it hit the grass and I thought, “Oh, this isn’t good.” ’ - Philip Dinova of Encino, who watched a luxury jet veer off the runway while landing at Van Nuys Airport in February, smashing through four parked planes before hitting a tree.

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‘Murder is murder, and attempted murder is attempted murder, whether done under the guise of protest or not.’ - Capt. Tom Pigott of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Sara Jane Olson, above, the former Palmdale resident Kathleen Ann Soliah. Olson was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army and is accused of making terrorist bombs in the 1970s.

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‘It’s like dealing with obesity by loosening your belt.’ - Gloria Ohland of the Surface Transportation Policy Project on the proposed widening of the San Diego and Ventura Freeway interchange.

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‘It’s overwhelming. To take someone from where he was to where he is today - it’s a miracle. It means everything to us just to see him health.’ - Charles Kadish, whose 5-year-old son, Benjamin, above, was the most severely injured when a gunman, allegedly Buford Furrow, opened fire at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills.

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‘To mount the kind of campaign needed to win would have required me to put aside both my music and my work as a defense analyst for the next year.’ - Former Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, on why he decided not to seek the Republican nomination for the 24th Congressional District.

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‘I feel like a cowboy that’s been riding on a bucking bronco where one of two things can happen. Either it stops bucking and you break the horse or you get thrown off.’ - Burbank Airport Executive Director Thomas E. Greer - a driving force behind efforts to build a new airline terminal - who resigned in May after 15 years on the job.

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‘She’ll pull the pin, toss the grenade, jump on the plane and say see you later.’ - Robert LoPresti, a member of CSUN’s stadium siting committee, criticizing departing President Blenda J. Wilson’s decision to locate the new stadium on the North Campus site.

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‘Who knows why this happened? When people hear about this they might say it was terrorism, they might say it was religion. I couldn’t imagine why someone would do this.’ - Hy Shalometh, whose wife was one of the five victims injured in the August attack.

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‘This may come as a shock to you, but I’m sending you a letter about what your company did under Nazi Germany 63 years ago.’ -George Gregory of Encino, above, in a phone call to Hans Kollmeier, president of a multinational chemicals corporation in western Germany, explaining that his father had been forced to seel the company and flee.

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‘He’s a poor loser. Just suck it up and go on with it.’ - Jeanie Adair, left, on Deputy Dist. Atty. Marsh Goldstein. In Octboer, Adair was acquitted of the baseball bat murder of her husband. Goldstein prosecuted her case.

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‘Everyone was afraid to play them. Those who haven’t played them think they are going to play the devil.’ -Javier Gonzalez, sports director and president of the adult soccer league at Delano Park in Van Nuys, on a soccer team he encouraged, composed of current and former gang members.

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‘When a crime is committed in hell, you don’t have angels as witnesses.’ -Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi, after the criminal backgrounds of some witnesses for the prosecution were exposed by the defense in the trial of three men accused of killing a North Hills woman.

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‘At 7:30 this morning, in my backyard, it sounded like “Saving Private Ryan.” ’ - John Moranville, president of the 500-member Knollwood Property owners Assn. on gunfire from the nearby Los Angeles Police Department training center in Granada Hills.

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‘The thing we find so weird about it is, here we are in the arts district and we can’t even be artsy.’ -David Cox, president of the American Renegade Theater Company in the NoHo Arts District of North Hollywood, where business owners are being cited by the city for painting designs on the sidewalks.