Quotes by Pete Hamill - Page 3

People become writers in the first place by those things that hurt you into art, as Yeats said it. Then they become separated from what started out affecting them. Journalism forces you to look at the world so you don't get cut off.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Journalism
Yeats
Affecting
First Place
Forces
Art Look World
Separated
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Viewers can't work or play while watching television; they can't read; they can't be out on the streets, falling in love with the wrong people, learning how to quarrel and compromise with other human beings. In short, they are asocial.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Compromise
Falling In Love
Human Beings
Streets
Television
Viewers
Watching Television
Love Work Learning
Beings
Short
Falling
Quarrel
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There is a growing feeling that perhaps Texas is really another country, a place where the skies, the disasters, the diamonds, the politicians, the women, the fortunes, the football players and the murders are all bigger than anywhere else.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Bigger
Country
Football
Player
Texas
Anywhere
Anywhere Else
Diamonds
Disasters
Politicians
Football Players
Fortunes
Perhaps
Skies
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Reporters now are better educated than the crowd I knew when I broke in. We still had guys shaped by Prohibition and the Depression, so the news business still had badly paid people who loved it for the life, because every day was different.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Broke
Prohibition
Reporters
Badly
Life Business Day
Shaped
News Business
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Every reporter inhales skepticism. You interview people, and they lie. You face public figures, diligently making notes or taping what is said, and they perform their interviews to fit a calculated script. The truth, alas, is always elusive.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Alas
Elusive
Figures
Notes
Public Figures
Skepticism
Calculated
Diligently
Reporter
Interview
Taping
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My ambition was to embrace those general qualities that Ernest Hemingway, a former newspaperman, once said should be present in all good books: 'the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.'
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Ambition
Book
Weather
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Sinatra slowly found a way to allow tenderness into the performance while remaining manly. He perfected the role of the Tender Tough Guy and passed it on to several generations of Americans. Before him, that archetype did not exist in American popular culture.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Generations
Manly
Popular Culture
Tough Guy
Allow
Exist
Slowly
Performance
Popular
Passed
Remaining
Several
Sinatra
Tender
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One of the first things that helped me to understand certain things about writing was seeing 'The Iceman Cometh' in the Village when I was a kid, before I ever became a newspaperman, and realizing that the world I knew could also be the subject of some amazing stuff.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Realizing
Village
Amazing World Me
Certain Things
Cometh
First Things
Newspaperman
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In 1962, I wrote a series about 42nd Street called 'Welcome to Lostville.' One result was that the young Bob Dylan read it and invited me to his first concert at Town Hall; the result was a kind of friendship that years later led to my liner notes for 'Blood on the Tracks.'
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Friendship
Blood
Dylan
Invited
Notes
Series
Welcome
Bob Dylan
Concert
Street
Hall
Later
Led
Town
Result
Town Hall
Wrote
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There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep growing until I die. This has exasperated my daughters, amused my friends and baffled my accountant. If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; I would not be richer.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Daughter
Book
Long Ago
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In the 1950s, when I was hanging around Sullivan's Gym and the Gramercy Gym, there were fixed fights. Mob guys like Frankie Carbo and Blinky Palermo had taken over the sport; one lightweight champion loaned his title to others at least twice; the welterweight division was a slag heap.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Champion
Division
Gym
Slag
Taken
Twice
Fights
Sport
Frankie
Heap
Lightweight
Loaned
Mob
Sullivan
Title
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The Huffingtonpost.com does not pay its writers. Tina Brown's thedailybeast.com does pay its writers. You have to be paid because this is not a hobby. You have to keep that standard. You can't ask grandpa to loan you money because you have to go to Afghanistan. I walked the picket line for that to continue.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Afghanistan
Grandpa
Loan
Standard
Picket
Tina
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In the '70s, the newspaper guild managed to get people paid what they were worth, but the reporters suddenly became middle class. It's much more respectable, more uptight, and everyone speaks in guarded tones. And the writing isn't as good. We always had guys who were failed poets and failed novelists who did it to eat.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Class
Guarded
Middle
Middle Class
Novelists
Paid
Reporters
Respectable
Uptight
Writing
Good Always People
Became
Failed
Good People Always
Guys
Newspaper
Poets
Speaks
Suddenly
Tones
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One thing that I notice that is changing, you don't see kids on Sunday. Most of them are home. The kids are having much more virtual childhoods instead of childhoods. They don't play ball or hang out with the wrong people or get in fistfights, all the things that once made childhood. I don't know how it's going to turn out.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Sunday
Childhoods
Hang
Notice
Virtual
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There is something elegantly sinister about the Rolling Stones. They sit before you at a press conference like five unfolding switchblades; their faces set in rehearsed snarls; their hair studiously unkempt and matted; their clothes part of some private conceit; and the way they walk and talk and the songs they sing all become part of some long mean reach for the jugular.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Hair
Mean
Song
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What libraries give you is all three tenses - the past tense - the present tense in which we live and the future that we can only imagine. These places have teachers who are living and dead and we are lucky to have them. If I sit here and read Aristotle, he is speaking to me across a thousand years - more than a thousand years. That sense that I am in the company of the great greatest people who ever lived is a humbling experience but a liberating experience.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Teacher
Past
Years
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Just like that. Gone forever. They will not grow old together. They will never live on a beach by the sea, their hair turned white, dancing in a living room to Billie Holiday or Nat Cole. They will not enter a New York club at midnight and show the poor hip-hop fools how to dance. They will not chuckle together over the endless folly of the world, its vanities and stupid ambitions. They will not hug each other in any chilly New York dawn. Oh, Mary Lou. My baby. My love.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
New York
Baby
Beach
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They all laughed. I drew their pictures and they asked for copies and I handed them out as if they were my tickets to the show. In the Navy Yard, I could drink with men because I worked with men; in the Parkview, I could drink with men because I drew their pictures. The world was a grand confusion. Finally, when I was bleary, when my hand wouldn't do what I wanted it to do, I went home. I would lie alone in the dark, feeling that I was a character in a story that had lost its plot.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Home
Character
Lying
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One thing is certain: for many of those who came back from WWII, the music of Frank Sinatra was no consolation for their losses. Some had lost friends. Some had lost wives and lovers. All had lost portions of their youth. More important to the Sinatra career the girls started marrying the men who came home. Bobby socks vanished from many closets. The girls who wore them had no need anymore for imaginary lovers; they had husbands. Nothing is more embarrassing to grownups than the passions of adolescence, and for many, Frank Sinatra was the passion.
Pete Hamill / Journalist
Girl
Husband
Passion
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Pete Hamill Quotes - Page 3

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