Jimmy Breslin

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

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

Dont trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Complainant received immediate lacerations of the credibility.

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.

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

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.

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.

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

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

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

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

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

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.

Media, the plural of mediocrity.

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

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

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

Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy.

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