Pete Hamill Quotes
One thing I learned working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard was to be on time. If the day begins at 8 A.M., be there early, get there, punch the time clock; don't just stand there like an oaf.
Quotes to Explore
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To me, doctors and nurses and teachers are heroes, doing often infinitely more difficult work than the more flamboyant kind of a hero.
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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.
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Journalism is a team sport. Writing novels is golf: it's you and the ball.
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In my experience, growing up in Brooklyn and all that, the real tough guys didn't act tough. They didn't talk tough. They were tough, you know? I think about these politicians who try to pose as tough guys - it makes me laugh.
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You can't be a reporter using Google. It can be a tool. But you have to get out of the house.
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Travel at least erodes some of the narrowness that exists in each of us.
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The most successful terrorist group in the United States for almost 70 years was the Ku Klux Klan. They hated Catholics, Jews, and blacks. They were prone to violence.
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Everybody who went to Vietnam carries his or her own version of the war. Only 10 percent engaged in combat; the American elephant, pursuing the Vietnamese grasshopper, was extraordinarily heavy with logistical support.
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Say what you will about him Ed Koch is still the best show in town.
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For those without money, the road to that treasure house of the imagination begins at the public library.
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I'm so concerned with morgues and libraries of the newspapers.
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Any of us who've been newspapermen for a long time hate generalizations.
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When I was in the navy, I wanted to go to Paris and the Academie Julian. I never did. Mexico City took me instead.
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I like to say that journalism is the graduate school from which you never graduate.
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I usually wake up at 7, 7:15, without an alarm. I hate the sound of an alarm.
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If it's a beautiful day, I love taking walks. The walks are always aimless.
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New York and Dublin are now suburbs of each other.
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Amazon.com isn't the same as going down an aisle. The same as record stores. You'll go for Billie Holiday, and you buy Gustav Mahler as you're going out the door.
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The most powerful force in American politics is not anger, it's nostalgia.
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I've lived in other cities - Rome, Dublin, Mexico City - but I was born in New York City, and I always lived in those other places as a New Yorker.
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If you ask me, I think 12-step programs are perfectly valid, can be an enormous help. But it depends on the individual.
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Anybody who sits and says, 'I know New York' is from out of town.
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I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.
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If you're the oldest in a large family, you tend to do everything yourself, particularly if you are the first American. You begin a habit or pattern that makes it easy to reject other help.