Jimmy Breslin Quotations

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

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

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

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

Don't try to tell Namath's people on First Avenue about Babe Ruth, because they don't even know the name. In fact, with the young, you can forget all of baseball. The sport is gone. But if you ever have seen Ruth, and then you see Namath, you know there is very little difference.

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.

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.

Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.

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 don't know any other columnists, and I don't know what they do. I work the single! And nobody does what I do, anyway.

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

I played football. I played trumpet. I could draw.

Pick up any newspaper in the morning. Count the words in the lead sentences. There will be at least 25 in all of them: Guaranteed. The writers just want to tell you how many degrees they have from this college or that university.

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

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

There is no other reason for his fame.

The only reason this country is different from any place else is that once in a great while, this huge, snobbish, generally untalented news reporting business stops covering stories of interest only to itself and actually serves the public.

ABC Television Network: Your services, such as they are, will no longer be required as of 12/20/86.

The number 1 rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Complainant received immediate lacerations of the credibility.

Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Media, the plural of mediocrity.

Anything that isn't writing is easy

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

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.

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.

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