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Pete Hamill

Pete Hamill Quotes

Journalist

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Famous Pete Hamill Quotes

“Some newspaper stories can be presented in entertaining ways; they can make you laugh; they can make you weep. But they are not charged with providing exaltation or fantasy. In the most entertained nation in the history of the world, newspapers exist to provide the citizenry with truth. Sometimes the truth can have a moral point. Sometimes the truth is painful. Sometimes the truth is banal. But it has to be true. It must have a granitelike foundation in fact. The mere stacking of facts is not, of course, enough. The facts must be organized into a coherent whole. They must tell a story. And the great story usually tells us something larger than the mere facts, something about what novelists and philosophers have called, perhaps too grandly, the human condition.”

TruthTruth TellingJournalistic Integrity
Book:News Is a Verb: Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century
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“If love lyrics were too mushy, he could sing them and make wised-up fun of the mush, and still, in some part of the self, acknowledge that there was some truth to the words. He could be tender and still be a tough guy. Ruth Etting could sing her weepy torch songs, but for men, whining or self-pity was not allowed; they were forbidden by the male codes of the city. Sinatra slowly found a way to allow tenderness into the performance while remaining manly. When he finally took command of his own career, 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. That is one reason why he continues to matter; Frank Sinatra created a new model for American masculinity.”

TendernessMasculinityPopular CultureTough Guy
Book:Why Sinatra Matters
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“Those reporters, writers, photographers, and editors are the best Americans I know. They cherish the ideals of their imperfect profession and of the Republic whose freedoms, equally imperfect in practice have so often made those ideals real. They want desperately to do good, honorable work. In spite of long hours and low pay, they are insistently professional. They are also brave. I can't ever forget that in Indochina 65 journalists were killed in the course of recording the truth about that war. . . .Reporters and photographers did not stop dying when Vietnam was over. They have been killed in Lebanon and Nicaragua, in Bosnia and Peru, and in a lot of other places where hard rain falls. I can't believe that these good men and women died for nothing. I know they didn't. They died because they were the people chosen by the tribe to carry the torch to the back of the cave and tell the others what is there in the darkness. They died because they were serious about the craft they practiced. They died because they believed in the fundamental social need for what they did with a pen, a notebook, a typewriter, or a camera. They didn't die to increase profits for the stockholders. They didn't die to obtain an invitation to some White House dinner for a social-climbing publisher. They died for us. As readers or journalists, we honor them when we remember that their dying was not part of a plan to make the world cheaper, baser, or dumber. They died to bring us the truth.”

JournalistMurderedFight For TruthCave Myth
Author:Pete Hamill
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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.”

WayMeanLongFacesSongWalksFiveHairClothesStonesPressesRollingConferencesConceitUnfoldingRolling StonesSinisterPress Conferences
Author:Pete Hamill
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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.”

WorldShowsTogetherGrowsWhitePoorRoomsGoneForeverSeaStupidNew YorkHairBabyFoolAmbitionDancingHip HopClubsEndlessVanityHipsBeachDawnFollyHolidayHopsMaryHugMidnightLiving RoomMy BabyChucklesChilly
Author:Pete Hamill
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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.”

PeopleIfsGivingYearsPastThreeCompanyTeacherImagineThousandLuckyLibraryThousand YearsLiberatingTenseHumblingPresent TenseHumbling Experiences
Author:Pete Hamill
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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.”

MenNeedsImportantHomeCertainGirlPassionLostLossCareersWifeOne ThingYouthHe ManLoversHusbandPortionsFrankImaginaryAdolescenceClosetsEmbarrassingConsolationWwiiSockMarryingGrownupsLost Friend
Author:Pete Hamill
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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.”

IfsMenWorldCharacterStoriesShowsFeelingsHomeHandsWantedLyingLostDarkDrinkWho You AreConfusionPlotCopiesLaughedTicketsYardsNavyKnowing Who You AreAlone In The Dark
Book:A Drinking Life: A Memoir
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