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.

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.

It's hard to beat somebody when they don't give up.

I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

Let me play a Man in a scene.

I learned early on not to listen to either critique - the people who love you or the people who don't like you.

If it were possible to take interest rates into negative territory I would be voting for that.

When our hands have touched spices, they give fragrance to all they handle. Let us make our prayers pass through the hands of the Blessed Virgin. She will make them fragrant.

As artists we are here to make you uncomfortable with the complexity of your reality.

Climb the ladder only if it takes you to somewhere high! Some ascents may descend you to low places!

Art is not special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself if it is good.