The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

Go around with your eyes like a camera. Don't lose it by talking. Go and listen. And work!

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

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.

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

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.

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