Pete Hamill Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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So much of writing isn't the fun parts like we get to discuss. It is sitting there putting the words down.
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I am just so thankful that my mom was a fantastic mom. She wasn't a stage mother; she didn't push me. She was happy if I was happy. We are so different. I was very shy; my mom did all the talking. She was my strength. She never expected that I would be this ballerina.
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And for the few that only lend their ear, That few is all the world.
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The more walking-around money I have, the less I walk around.
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I was actually pretty shy in school. My defense mechanism was to be the class clown. I remember getting into a lot of trouble for being disruptive, and I was brought in front of the headteacher, who said: 'What's going to happen to you; what are you going to do when you grow up?' and I said: 'Well, I'm obviously going to be a comedian.'
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My parents were no ordinary people. My mother turned Gandhian, and my father was a staunch communist. They named me after the great saint as a symbol of communal harmony.
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A lot of people have a sense-of-entitlement mentality that somebody else ought to do these things for them. People are mad at the government for not getting jobs for them. I don't understand why it's the government's responsibility.
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Everyone in this house and the houses next door knows when I'm in the sauna because I start singing, and I sing the blues when I'm in a really good mood. I have a really loud voice, you know.
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You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts – in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my opinion; it was first expressed by the ancients. As art, literature has many similarities with the other art forms.
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If people don't know who you are, they're not going to listen to your message. And not everybody pays attention to politicians by watching Fox News and CNN.
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I grew up in a home where reading was a big deal.
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To me, patriotism is about working ethically and wholeheartedly in our chosen field.
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Managing to tell a story is very gratifying.
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Quite a few people feel uncomfortable when faced with the claim that the Jews are the world's smartest people. In our politically correct era, one is not expected to argue that one group within humanity has an advantage over all the others.
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Growing up, a film was an action film or it was a comedy or it was romantic, but you don't really see such stark lines between genres nowadays.
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Now don't stir. I'll be back in five minutes. And don't fall into any temptations while I am away.
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'I have a plan,' said Xaros, 'improbable only in its genius.'
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If it were in our national security to deploy to South Africa under apartheid, would we have found it acceptable or customary to segregate African American soldiers from other American soldiers, and say, 'It's just a cultural thing'? I don't think so. I would hope not.
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I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
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'Charlotte's Web,' which I read sitting on my mother's lap, was the most emotional experience: that was when I made the leap from seeing how to untangle words to realizing how books both contain and convey strong feelings.
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I worry too much.
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Women are allowed to enter the spaces of the senses, the space of the body, the spaces opened by sensations, all kinds of feelings, but women are not allowed to enter the spaces of reason to the same extent, that is to say the space of ideas, political ideas.
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Writers are rememberers.
