Jimmy Breslin Quotes

Don't trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover.

If a man, for private profit, tears at the public news, does so with the impatience of one who thinks he actually owns the news you get, it is against the national interest.

Rage is ... This is Breslin's full quote: Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers

When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.

The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.

All political power is primarily an illusion. Illusion. Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors, first a thin veil of blue smoke, then a thick cloud that suddenly dissolves into wisps of blue smoke, the mirrors catching it all, bouncing it back and forth.

Politics: where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be candidates themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.

You see, the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is the team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn't maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurence Rockefeller?

When you leave New York you ain't going anywhere.

A job on a newspaper is a special thing. Every day you take something that you found out about, and you put it down and in a matter of hours it becomes a product. Not just a product like a can or something. It is a personal product that people, a lot of people, take the time to sit down and read.

That's the horrible thing starting out, you get distracted a lot because anything is easier than writing. It's just the same enemy - blank paper.

The test of a good idea is its ability to last through a hangover

Media, the plural of mediocrity.

True New Yorkers do not really seek information about the outside world. They feel that if anything is not in New York it is not likely to be interesting.

The first funeral for Andrew Goodman was at night and it was a lot of work. To begin with they had to kill him.

Anything that isn't writing is easy

Marvelous Marv was holding down first base. This is like saying Willie Sutton works at your bank.

Speaks cheerful English and in the past has written this language with a paintbrush that talks.

What you want to do is not go to work. You're not missing a thing. The worst thing I did was start work young.

Men in the uniform of Wall Street retirement: black Chesterfield coat, rimless glasses and the Times folded to the obituary page.

People born in Queens, raised to say that each morning they get on the subway and "go to the city," have a resentment of Manhattan, of the swiftness of its life and success of the people who live there.

Complainant received immediate lacerations of the credibility.

Baseball isn't statistics, it's Joe DiMaggio rounding second base.

Out in the ocean, a rope is put around the man's neck. The other end of the rope is attached to an old jukebox and it is thrown overboard. The man invariably follows.

The number one rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.

Don't call me a journalist; I hate the word. It's pretentious!

The other feature is a gymnasium named after another dead politician who was gifted with fast and extremely sure hands.

Journalism should be truthful and entertaining. You know, with news and important facts you can entertain people too. Have a little humor. Life isn't all that deadly all the time, but while you're having fun, tell the truth. If every word of a column is deadly serious, I can't read it. It makes me throw up.

If you gather a lot of stuff, then you write it, write in scenes with dialogue. Somewhere in the middle, rising from all this research like strong metal towers, is your opinions.

I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.

Those of Manhattan are the brokers on Wall Street and they talk of people who went to the same colleges; those from Queens are margin clerks in the back offices and they speak of friends who live in the same neighborhood.

Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy.

Why something in the public interest such as television news can be fought over, like a chain of hamburger stands, eludes me.

Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.

Newspapers are so boring. How can you read a newspaper that starts with a 51-word lead sentence?

Precious was one of a large number of people on the street, many of whom appeared to be women; some, like Precious, actually were.

I busted out of the place in a hurry and went to a saloon and drank beer and said that for the rest of my life I'd never take a job in a place where you couldn't throw cigarette butts on the floor. I was hooked on this writing for newspapers and magazines.

I'm on my high school football team and MUST show how much I know.

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

The auditorium, named after a dead Queens politician is windowless in honor of the secrecy in which he lived and, probably, the bank vaults he frequented.

Go around with your eyes like a camera. Don't lose it by talking. Go and listen. And work!

Journalism schools are good to get a job, but I don't know what else they are good for. I don't like the word "journalism" to begin with. It's news reporting, and that consists of using your two feet. The only lesson, then, that you could give people is how to climb stairs, because there are no stories on the first floor.

I always react to news immediately. That's my business.

I think it would be very good if writers and artists take a stand in electoral politics. They've got the ability to put words together that might reach the ears of the people of the city who vote.

Governments mostly don't do much. And you've also got to understand the level of incompetence out there. Nobody knows what they're doing. They just pose and act as if they know and walk through life and get away with it.