Damon Runyon Quotes

The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets.

A person who asks questions can get a reputation such as a person who wishes to find things out.

City Action. Al is a true Damon Runyon character

New York is the place where everyone will stop a championship fight to look at an usher giving a drunk the bum's rush.

Well, now, Dobber has a pretty fair sort of memory, and he says that Miss Sarah Brown tells The Sky that since he seems to know so much about the Bible, maybe he remembers the second verse of the Song of Solomon, but the chances are Dobber muffs the number of the verse, because I look the matter up in one of these Gideon Bibles, and the verse seems a little too much for Miss Sarah Brown, although of course you never can tell.

I'm inspired by love, by the moments that we commit to something with all our heart - be it a person, a project, an animal, anything really. It's undeniably inspiring, that acknowledgment of existence, that I love, that I care. That fills me with purpose.

It seems that Good Time Charley always keeps a stock of rock candy and rye whisky on hand for touches of the grippe, and he gives me a few doses immediately, and in fact Charley takes a few doses with me, as he says there is no telling but what I am scattering germs of my touch of the grippe all around the joint, and he must safe-guard his health.

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.

In Dream Street there are many theatrical hotels, and rooming houses, and restaurants, and speaks, including Good Time Charley's Gingham Shoppe, and in the summer time the characters I mention sit on the stoops or lean against the railings along Dream Street, and the gab you hear sometimes sounds very dreamy indeed. In fact, it sometimes sounds very pipe-dreamy. Many actors, male and female, and especially vaudeville actors, live in the hotels and rooming houses, and vaudeville actors, both male and female, are great hands for sitting around dreaming out loud about how they will practically assassinate the public in the Palace if ever they get a chance. Furthermore, in Dream Street are always many hand-bookies and horse players, who sit on the church steps on the cool side of Dream Street in the summer and dream about big killings on the races, and there are also nearly always many fight managers, and sometimes fighters, hanging out in front of the restaurants, picking their teeth and dreaming about winning championships of the world, although up to this time no champion of the world has yet come out of Dream Street. In this street you see burlesque dolls, and hoofers, and guys who write songs, and saxophone players, and newsboys, and newspaper scribes, and taxi drivers, and blind guys, and midgets, and blondes with Pomeranian pooches, or maybe French poodles, and guys with whiskers, and night-club entertainers, and I do not know what all else. And all of these characters are interesting to look at, and some of them are very interesting to talk to, although if you listen to several I know long enough, you may get the idea that they are somewhat daffy, especially the horse players.

Un famoso pasaje bíblico apunta que «la carrera no la gana el más ágil, ni la batalla el más fuerte».[3] El escritor americano Damon Runyon añadió: «Pero yo apostaría por ellos».

My father was a renowned chef, who had learned his trade as an apprentice in Europe. During the depression with work hard to find, he accepted employment at Mafia run speakeasies “The Top Hat” and the “Gay Haven,” along with some other similar places, were roughshod, working class nightclubs in Union City, New Jersey, that hosted top performers. Ultimately, being recognized for his abilities, my father was offered the position of “Sous Chef” at the famous Lindy’s Restaurant in New York City, referred to as “Mindy’s” in Damon Runyon’s Broadway play “Guys and Dolls.” Being a loyal employee, he worked at Lindy’s for over three decades until his retirement. Union City, New Jersey, now has the second largest Cuban population concentration in the United States. But in earlier times it was known for having the rowdy “Hudson Burlesque,” as well as gathering places at the “Transfer Station,” where “men of means” could connect with “ladies of the night” and buy them a drink at one of the classy watering holes, such as the “Key Hole Bar and Grill.” I guess that it all came under the heading of “Entertainment.

Christians commit crimes with their hands, the Jews use their reason.’ A typical Jewish big-time criminal was Jacob ‘Greasy Thumb’ Guzik (1887-1956), who was Al Capone’s bookkeeper and treasurer. Another was Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928), the pioneer of big business crime, who is portrayed as ‘The Brain’ in Damon Runyon’s stories, and by Scott Fitzgerald as Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby. Then there was Meyer Lansky, who created and lost a gambling empire and had his application for Israeli citizenship turned down in 1971.

Popular fiction is supposed to be essentially story-driven; the proof that it works is the sound of the pages turning. But a few of the great pop writers were stylists, above all, and their success is measured by a different sound, that of the snort of appreciation followed by a phrase read out loud to a half-sleeping spouse in bed at night. The pages stop turning while we admire the sentences. Few readers of Raymond Chandler can recall, or even follow, the plot of Farewell, My Lovely - Chandler himself couldn't always follow his plots. What they remember is that Moose Malloy on a Los Angeles street was as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel-food cake. Of all the pop formalists, the purest and strangest may be Damon Runyon... Runyon's appeal came from his mastery of an American idiom. We read Runyon not for the stories but for the slang, half found on Broadway in the nineteen-twenties and thirties and half cooked up in his own head...

There are only four of these mission workers, and two of them are old guys, and one is an old doll, while the other is a young doll who is tooting on a cornet. After a couple of ganders at this young doll, The Sky is a goner, for this is one of the most beautiful young dolls anybody ever sees on Broadway, and especially as a mission worker. Her name is Miss Sarah Brown. She is tall, and thin, and has a first-class shape, and her hair is light brown, going on blonde, and her eyes are like I do not know what, except that they are one-hundred-per-cent eyes in every respect. Furthermore, she is not a bad cornet player, if you like cornet players…

He is about Slats’ age and is short and thick and has a kisser that is surely a pain to even his own mamma. He is called Julie the Starker because starker means a strong rough guy and there is no doubt that Julie answers this description in every manner, shape and form. He is at one time in his life a prize fighter but strictly a catcher which is a way of saying he catches everything the other guy throws at him and at other times he is a bouncer; I do not know what all else except that he has some Sing Sing background

While I do not believe the story that once when she has a headache and Doc Kelton puts his thermometer in her mouth, to see if she is running a temperature, the mercury freezes tight, there is no doubt that Beatrice is not the emotional type and to be very frank about the matter many think she is downright frosty. But of course, no one ever mentions this to the late Slats because he is greatly in love and the chances are he maybe thinks Beatrice is hotter than a stove and personally I am in no position to deny it.

He finally staggers up to the last resting place of the late Slats Slavin and falls there with the blood pumping from the hole that Johnny Brannigan drills in his chest and as I notice his lips moving I hasten to his side figuring that he may be about to utter the name of the horse Slats gives him for me.

But,’ Willie says, ‘I become a terrific ticket taker. In fact,’ he says, ‘I am known as the Eisenhower of the front door. Furthermore, this assignment comes to me in nick of time because my original outfit is sent to Europe where I understand the victuals are even worse than they are in camp and there is practically no hotel life for an enlisted man.

Lombardi himself was partly responsible for this. He alone among the men of the four great Fordham front walls emerged as a large enough figure later in life to carry the legend. But this was also the work of the storytellers. Grantland Rice and Damon Runyon and their brethren glorified the 1936 line above all others, and their fraternal heir, Tim Cohane, continued the tradition. There is something to be said for the way they presented the world, looking for the romantic aspects of human nature through the playing of games, preferring it to what would come later, the cynicism of modern journalism and its life-deadening focus on money, controversy and man’s inevitable fall from grace. The problem with the storytellers was not their exaltation of myth, but their pursuit of the ideal to the exclusion of reality, allowing for the perpetuation of the fallacy of the innocent past.

Hello, Julie,” he says. “I am commencing to wonder what becomes of you. I am walking around here for weeks trying to keep warm and I am all tuckered out. What do you suppose is the idea of not providing people with overcoats when they are placed to rest? Only I do not rest, Julie. Do you see Beatrice lately and what does she says about my stone?

 “It is a long stone of white Carrara marble in excellent taste,” Slats says. “It is to lie flat over my last resting place, not to stand upright, and it is cut to exactly cover same from end to end and side to side. I order it in this form,” Slats says, “because I am always a restless soul and long have a fear I may not lie quietly in my last resting place but may wish to roam around unless there is a sort of lid over me such as this stone. And besides,” he says, “it will keep the snow off me. I loathe and despise the snow. I will leave the engraving to you, Baby, but promise you will take care of the stone at once.

I will not attempt to describe Gin-Rummy in detail as you can call up any insane asylum and get any patient on the ’phone and learn all about it in no time, as all lunatics are bound to be Gin players, and in fact the chances are it is Gin-Rummy that makes them lunatics. Damon Runyon, The Lacework Kid