Quotes by Jimmy Breslin

“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 marvellous personality that started you drinking in the first place.”

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

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

“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 Id never take a job in a place where you couldnt throw cigarette butts on the floor. I was hooked on this writing for newspapers and magazines.”

“The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money”

“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.”

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

“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.”

Life never was long enough to provide time for enemies. Nor is it long enough for people who bore me, or for me to stand around boring and antagonizing others, or for all of us, the others and me, to get into these half-friendly, half-sour fender-bumpings of egos and personalities and ideas, a process which turns a day into a contest when it really should be a series of hours serving your pleasure.

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

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

When you leave New York you aint going anywhere.

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

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