Time & Perspective Quote by Jimmy Breslin

“Speaks cheerful English” sounds like a compliment until you hear the little click of Breslin’s switchblade wit. He’s describing someone whose public persona is fluency itself: charming, accessible, all sunshine vowels. But the phrasing is too pointed to be innocent. “Cheerful” isn’t just an adjective; it’s an accusation about tone-policing and performance, the kind of brightness expected from outsiders, celebrities, or anyone being packaged for mass consumption. Breslin, the patron saint of New York plainspokenness, is already implying that the English is being used not to reveal a person, but to sell one.

Then comes the gorgeous, needling pivot: “in the past has written this language with a paintbrush that talks.” That’s Breslin doing what he does best, collapsing high art and street talk into one image that’s both admiring and skeptical. A “paintbrush that talks” suggests a person who once expressed themselves most truthfully through visuals, gesture, style - a nonverbal eloquence that didn’t need perfect grammar to land emotionally. Now that voice has been translated into “English,” and Breslin is asking what got lost in that translation, or what got smoothed over.

The intent isn’t to mock talent; it’s to expose the machinery of interpretation around it. Breslin’s subtext: we reward the version of an artist that’s easiest to caption, interview, and market. The “past” matters. It hints at a before-and-after: authenticity before PR, art before explanation, a “talking” brush before the demands of being legible on cue.