As nearly all great fortunes in America are made on land stolen while the public’s back is turned – and by people who want money but don’t want to work for it, by men who use the title of builder and yet never have driven a nail into a board – nowhere was the relationship between politician and merchant closer than at the time the subways of New York were built.

— Jimmy Breslin

Jimmy Breslin Quotes

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

— Jimmy Breslin

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

— Jimmy Breslin

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

— 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

Out in the ocean, a rope is put around the man’s neck. The other end of the rope is attached to an old jukebox and it is thrown overboard. The man invariably follows.

— 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

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

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

— 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

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

— Jimmy Breslin

Firsts

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

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

— Jimmy Breslin

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

— 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

Precious was one of a large number of people on the street, many of whom appeared to be women; some, like Precious, actually were.

— Jimmy Breslin

So the Mets are a bad ball club. All right, they’re the worst ball club you ever saw. So what? The important thing is they are in the National League and they are familiar.

— Jimmy Breslin

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.

— Jimmy Breslin

I intended to concentrate throughout the summer on matters of extreme urgency: ocean waves breaking in the sunlight and swirls inside oyster shells and the mystery of the sound of ice hitting the sides of a glass. In the afternoon, the ice makes only this gentle, clicking, almost tinkling sound. Yet at night it sounds like gravel being poured into a barrel. Why is ice louder at night than it is in the daytime? Let me put on my shoes and we’ll go out and investigate.

— Jimmy Breslin

Shoelaces are the first way society ties up the individual.

— Jimmy Breslin

As nearly all great fortunes in America are made on land stolen while the public’s back is turned – and by people who want money but don’t want to work for it, by men who use the title of builder and yet never have driven a nail into a board – nowhere was the relationship between politician and merchant closer than at the time the subways of New York were built.

— Jimmy Breslin

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