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"Downtown is where the students want to be. You wouldn't believe the number of calls I get from UT students absolutely craving a place in downtown Knoxville."
—Developer David Dewhirst
"We were trying to come up with something that folks coming in with AAU [Junior Olympics] could attend while they were here in Knoxville."
—Thompson-Boling arena manager Tim Reese, on inviting children participating in the Junior Olympics to attend a concert by rapper Mystikal, who was later accused of rape
"Tim Hutchison is of the mindset that he cannot be touched and that he can do anything to anybody without repercussions. And that, ultimately, will be his downfall."
—James Dunn, fired Knox County Sheriff's Department Officer
"I don't know that we have provisions that allow us to not charge the customer and explain that to the other customers."
—KUB chief operating officer Bill Elmore on why customer Margie Martin pays $30 a month for water and sewer, even as other people's waste floods her backyard
"People pull in and say, this is beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But then they go back on Broadway and Central, and they feel like they're in a demilitarized zone."
—Tim Rose, owner of Matrix Installations in Emory Place
"That was a cheap shot, and I took great offense, especially coming from somebody who's been a career politician and who's never met a payroll in his life, except on the taxpayers' backs. I plan my personal vacations around Council meetings while he's been gallivanting the world."
—Councilman Nick Pavlis on Victor Ashe, responding to the news that Ashe was criticizing him for missing Council meetings
"The food court will not be a dining experience. It will be a convenience experience.... Remember, this will not just be an educational experience; it will also be an entertainment experience."
—Developer Earl Worsham, answering questions about Universe Knoxville
"Cars are as numerous here as bicycles were when I was in school. And the car of choice is a five-liter Mustang with chrome wheels. That's built for speed, and that's the car. When a guy has one of those, he thinks he has to drive fast, or he's a wuss."
—Powell High School Principal Charles Mashburn, discussing the possible reasons many students had been killed in traffic-related accidents in recent years
"I can tell anybody how to make a small fortune. You take a large fortune and open up a sports bar."
—Hugh Ray Wilson, the former owner of Hooray's Sports Bar
"Downtown is where the students want to be. You wouldn't believe the number of calls I get from UT students absolutely craving a place in downtown Knoxville."
—Developer David Dewhirst
"A lot of my detractors said there'd be a train wreck after I took office. They just didn't know it would be 15 days after I was sworn in."
—New Knox County Executive Mike Ragsdale, on the Norfolk Southern derailment and chemical leak in September
"East Tennessee is Van Hilleary country."
—Thousands of Hilleary campaign signs that appeared during the week's prior to the Nov. 5 election, when Phil Bredesen edged out a victory largely because he won Knox, Anderson, and Roane Counties
"If we want to gain full equality in the legal profession, we have to be lawyers in the full sense of what it means to be a lawyer, not in the Ally McBeal sense that emphasizes the superficial Madison Avenue stereotypes of women—that you have to be small and blonde and gorgeous and clean and not get into the field and investigate your cases."
—Former Supreme Court Justice Penny White
"This is a perfect example of why you need term limits."
—County commissioner John Schmid, on the Knox County Library Board's refusal to conduct a national search to find a new library director
"I'm not really sure what it's like. I kind of go off into la-la land. I'm cohesive for a while and then something happens to me. It's like the best sex I've had and you put it on Ecstasy and it's 100 times better than that. And the next thing I know the set is over and I'm saying hello to people. I've done every drug known and it's better than all of them."
—Angela Bartlett, guitarist for Dixie Dirt, on what performing live feels like
"At this point, I don't want to buy anything in this state if I don't have to. All my life, I've tried to defend Tennessee against charges that we're a politically backward state. I surrender now."
—Knoxville attorney Charlie Thomas, who loads up on gasoline and groceries when out of state to protest Tennessee's high sales taxes
"In Knoxville and Knox County I sure don't think we have a problem with uncontrolled urban development. I'm not exactly sure what [Mayor Victor Ashe] is talking about when he says 'Urban Sprawl.'"
—New County Executive Mike Ragsdale, on his plans for dealing with urban sprawl in Knox County
"I can tell you one thing, the road is going to be built!.... You can sit here and say, 'Well, we got these pretty flowers and these pretty trees.' Well, those pretty flowers and pretty trees are going to have to go, 'cause we need roads!"
—Jack Barnes, a city employee and Republican party operative, speaking about the fate of the South Knoxville Connector at a City Council meeting
"It was full of people; it was vibrant."
—Local artist Eric Sublett, on growing up in Fort Sanders in the late '50s and early '60s
"I'm probably the first Reform Jew in Knoxville to recite poetry in the presence of bagpipes."
—Marilyn Kallet, 2002 recipient of the Terry Semple Memorial Prize in the Robert Burns Poetry Award contest, at the Scottish Society of Knoxville's Roberts Burns dinner
"I walked in, and the plaster's falling off the walls, the ceilings in the bedroom were sagging. It was horrible," she says. "I loved it, and I bought it."
—Urban pioneer Barbara Simpson, on buying a house in Fourth & Gill in 1981
"We don't love the Sunsphere. We're forced to respect it."
—Architect Doug McCarty, on designing the Knoxville Convention Center at the foot of the Sunsphere
"Knoxville is such a wonderful journalism town. Adolph Ochs, the guy who made the New York Times into the newspaper we know today, learned everything he knew about journalism right here. I tell people that he brought the Times up to Tennessee journalism standards. Knoxville's tourism bureau would never think to say something like that."
—Jeff Bradley, coauthor of Moon Handbooks: Smoky Mountains, on Knoxville's attempts at self-promotion
"I can't give you any specifics on that."
"Specifics aren't available for the Smithsonian or other possible tie-ins."
"We can't be specific about that board today."
"We're not sure..."
"There's not a specific process in place for that right now."
"The first study was done before we had any idea..."
"There are vague issues associated with this project."
"But we are committed to it."
"I can only assure you that Universe Knoxville will be connected to downtown."
—Earl Worsham, Tom Ingram, and other UK backers clarifying their vision of Universe Knoxville for City Council
"Look at the folks who are asking us not to build this road. Who are they? What are their agendas? We don't have any personal interest in this road. [TDOT Commissioner] Bruce Saltsman lives in Nashville. I live in Nashville. We don't have any interest in the road the way a property owner would."
—TDOT spokeswoman, Luanne Grandinetti, on opposition to the South Knoxville Connector
"When I come home to Knoxville I'll be drinking at the Longbranch or somewhere and some one will come up to me and say, 'So, you still like it down there?' It's like they're setting me up. They want me to say it sucks. I can't do that. There seems like there's this perception of Nashville from Knoxvillians that [Nashville] is the big steal-your-soul, kill-your-spirit kind of city. I guess it could do that to you."
—Brian Waldschlager, on being a Knoxvillian in the Music City
"One day he got on the coffee table, so I picked up the spray bottle and squirted him and he flinched but he didn't move. So I sprayed him again, and he flinched but didn't move. And I kept spraying and spraying and spraying and he didn't move. So I put away the spray bottle and that was the last time I ever used it. He had won."
—Cat owner Michael Haynes, on disciplining a feline
"[T]here is absolutely no reason to change. I feel very, very strongly about this. I am so disappointed that this was taken up before we—the new Council members—took office. It should have been left to us."
—New City Council member Barbara Pelot, on the previous council's decision to change the city election cycle
"Every American is now a Vehiclean...[and Center Place of America will] cater to and please...Vehicleans who insist on driving-up-to where they are going and PARK FREE...instead of negative, unwanted and unsaleable misnomer 'pedestrian friendly'."
—from an advertisement for the proposed "Center Place of America," perhaps one day to be built at the corner of Cedar Bluff Rd. and Kingston Pk.
"Furniture polish. But not bad for furniture polish."
—Former Metro Pulse editor Jesse Fox Mayshark, rating Old Charter bourbon
"I'm not sure it's doing a lot for Henley Street. But then, the street's not doing a lot for it."
—Architecture professor Jon Coddington, on the KCC
December 18, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 51
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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Notable Quotes