Jimmy Breslin famous quotes

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

#Hangover #Ideas #Imagination

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

#Writing #Boys #Long

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Jobs #People #Special

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
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Writing #Quality #Rage

Complainant received immediate lacerations of the credibility.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Credibility

Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Hands #Architecture #Intention

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Writing #Enemy #Paper

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

#Boring #Newspapers #Sentences

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Strong #Writing #Towers

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

#Hate #Pretentious #Call Me

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?
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Baseball #Morning #Jobs

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Beautiful #Clouds #Mirrors

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

#Ties #News #Television

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

#Office #Democracy #President

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Arsonists #Vacant

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Jobs #Writing #Beer

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

#Night #Funeral #Firsts

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Queens #Honor #Vaults

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

#Hands #Politician #Gymnasiums

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Work #Missing #Want

Media, the plural of mediocrity.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Fun #Media #Mediocrity

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

#Football #Games #Coal

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

#Men #Political #President

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

#Retirement #Wall #Glasses

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

#Past #Cheerful #Language

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

#Numbers #Thieves #Stealing

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

#Firsts

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

#Baseball #Statistics

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Queens #Wall #College

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Ocean #Men #Jukebox

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#New York #Interesting #World

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.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#Men #Thinking #Tears

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

#Drinking #Food #Beer

When you leave New York you ain't going anywhere.
-- Jimmy Breslin

#New York