Pete Hamill Quotes

Frank Sinatra Was The Voice Of The 20th-century American City.

This Is Truly Marvelous Work Full Of Mystery, Nostalgia, Joy, The Color Of Whimsy.

Today There Are A Lot Of Novelists Who Seem To Be Writing To Be Reviewed, Not Read.

Say What You Will About Him Ed Koch Is Still The Best Show In Town.

The Goal Is To Be Both Disciplined And Loose, So That The Writing Does Not Turn Into A Task Or A Chore. To Leave Myself Behind, Along With The Mechanics, And Disappear Into The Lives Of My Characters.

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.

The Best Newspapermen I Know Are Those Most Thrilled By The Daily Pump Of City Room Excitements; They Long Fondly For A Good Murder; They Pray That Assassinations, Wars, Catastrophes Break On Their Editions.

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.

It's Odd Being An American Now. Most Of Us Are Peaceful, But Here We Are Again, In Our Fifth Major War Of This Century.

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.

The Only Way To Fight Nostalgia Is To Listen To Somebody Else's Nostalgia

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.