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

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
Idea
Ideas
Good
Hangover
Test
Tests
Ability
Lasts
Last

More quotes by Jimmy Breslin

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Anything that isn't writing is easy
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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.
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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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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.
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Newspapers are so boring. How can you read a newspaper that starts with a 51-word lead sentence?
Jimmy Breslin
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Baseball isn't statistics, it's Joe DiMaggio rounding second base.
Jimmy Breslin
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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
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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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I always react to news immediately. That's my business.
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 think it would be very good if writers and artists take a stand in electoral politics. They've got the ability to put words together that might reach the ears of the people of the city who vote.
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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Marvelous Marv was holding down first base. This is like saying Willie Sutton works at your bank.
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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Men in the uniform of Wall Street retirement: black Chesterfield coat, rimless glasses and the Times folded to the obituary page.
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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Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.
Jimmy Breslin
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I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.
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