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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Media, the plural of mediocrity.

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

Anything that isn't writing is easy

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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