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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Sometimes life just walks up to you, excuses itself and punches you in the face.

When you get right down to it, we don’t ever want to know one another too well. We want there to be that mystery. Where there’s mystery, there’s hope.

Why people wanted to dance whenever it got dark was beyond him. Somehow, the two seemed to go together, like bees and flowers, or flies and dung. Darkness and dancing.

If you have one wish, wish for everything to be exactly as it is. Then wait patiently for your wish to come true.

I like to flip through play scripts, not just my own; there is something exciting about seeing printed language on a page that triggers responses in me.

The common question that gets asked in business is, why? That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, why not?

Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don't yet have the capacity to be unconditionally loving.

Once the people begin to reason, all is lost

There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled.

Mercy should make us ashamed, wrath afraid to sin.