Top 66 Quotes & Sayings by Jimmy Breslin

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American entertainer Jimmy Breslin.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

James Earle Breslin was an American journalist and author. Until the time of his death, he wrote a column for the New York Daily News Sunday edition. He wrote numerous novels, and columns of his appeared regularly in various newspapers in his hometown of New York City. He served as a regular columnist for the Long Island newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004, though he still published occasional pieces for the paper until his death. He was known for his newspaper columns that became the brash embodiment of the street-smart New Yorker, chronicling wise guys and big-city power brokers but always offered a sympathetic viewpoint of the working-class people of New York City, and was awarded the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens".

American - Entertainer | Born: October 17, 1930

Source: Wikipedia

Donald Trump handles these nitwit reporters with a new and most disgraceful form of bribery.

Jimmy Breslin

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.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

Never use your own money. Steal a good idea and say it's your own. Do anything to get publicity. Remember that everybody can be bought.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Politicians attend dinners at hotels with contractors. Bankers discuss interest rates at lunch.

Jimmy Breslin

Some time ago, I made a basic decision about the way in which I was going to live the little of life available to me The idea was to place myself in the presence of only those people who give off the warm, friendly vibrations which soothe the coating on my nerves. Life never was long enough to provide time for enemies.

Jimmy Breslin

The trouble with Trump's father was that he was a totally naive man. He had no idea that you could buy the whole news reporting business in New York City with a return phone call.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

Media, the plural of mediocrity.

Jimmy Breslin

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.

Jimmy Breslin

Trump, in the crinkling of an eye, senses better than anyone the insecurity of people, that nobody knows whether anything is good or bad until they are told, and he is quite willing to tell them immediately.

Jimmy Breslin

Trump survives by Corum's Law. This is a famous, well-tested theory and is named after Bill Corum, who once wrote sports for the Hearst papers when they were in New York.

Jimmy Breslin

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

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

Trump is larger than life.

Jimmy Breslin

A politician finds anything to do with racial problems far more frightening than a gun.

Jimmy Breslin

You can get some work, some jobs that will bore you until you're dead. So you better look for something that's got a little tingle to it.

Jimmy Breslin

You get a little picture that reflects the whole. You can get readers interested in the life of one guy, and he can reflect the whole life around him. And it's a better picture than the politicians give you.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

I'm the best person ever to have a column in this business. There's never been anybody in my league.

Jimmy Breslin

The only people I don't answer are bill collectors.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

Jimmy Breslin

Complainant received immediate lacerations of the credibility.

Jimmy Breslin

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

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.

Jimmy Breslin

The financial people, who lead such dreary lives, believe what they read and see on television.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

As far as getting publicity whenever he wants it, Trump is the white Al Sharpton.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

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.

Jimmy Breslin

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.

Jimmy Breslin

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

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

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.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

I always react to news immediately. That's my business.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

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

Jimmy Breslin

Journalism schools are good to get a job, but I don't know what else they are good for. I don't like the word "journalism" to begin with. It's news reporting, and that consists of using your two feet. The only lesson, then, that you could give people is how to climb stairs, because there are no stories on the first floor.

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

Jimmy Breslin

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

Anything that isn't writing is easy

Jimmy Breslin

Top 66 Quotes & Sayings by Jimmy Breslin

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