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

Jimmy Breslin

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Jimmy Breslin
Age: 88 †
Born: 1928
Born: October 17
Died: 2017
Died: March 19
Journalist
Jamaica
Queens
James Earle Breslin
Copy
Copies
Became
Boys
Started
Stories
Writing
Long

More quotes by Jimmy Breslin

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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
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Don't trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover.
Jimmy Breslin
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I always react to news immediately. That's my business.
Jimmy Breslin
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.
Jimmy Breslin
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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
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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
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The test of a good idea is its ability to last through a hangover
Jimmy Breslin
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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
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Politics: where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be candidates themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.
Jimmy Breslin
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Marvelous Marv was holding down first base. This is like saying Willie Sutton works at your bank.
Jimmy Breslin
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Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.
Jimmy Breslin
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Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy.
Jimmy Breslin
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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
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Media, the plural of mediocrity.
Jimmy Breslin
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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
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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