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. – Pete Hamill
There are a lot of very good New York novels, but there’s no single all-encompassing novel, the way you could look at any number of Dickens books and say we know London as a result of that. – Pete Hamill
My father did shape me. He didn’t drive because he had one leg, and for years I never drove. I had no mobility. – Pete Hamill
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
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. – Pete Hamill
Part of my head will always be in the years after World War II – the five years before Korea started. – Pete Hamill
When I was a kid, I could draw, and my ambition was to be a cartoonist. I wanted to draw comics. But I also liked newspaper comics. – Pete Hamill
Leon Uris is a storyteller, in a direct line from those men who sat around fires in the days before history and made the tribe more human. – Pete Hamill
For years, the defenders of television have argued that the networks are only giving the people what they want. That might be true. But so is the Medellin cartel. – Pete Hamill
Ezra Pound was a crackpot on social and political issues, but he knew what he was talking about in matters of the written language. – Pete Hamill
Too many people take New York for granted. The primary reason is that history is not taught. That’s outrageous in a city where the past is still visible. – Pete Hamill
I was the oldest of seven kids, so I had no older brother who would say, ‘Schmuck, don’t do that.’ – Pete Hamill
Vietnam should have taught us that mindless anti-Communism is not a cause worth killing or dying for in a world in which Communism is hardly a monolithic force. – Pete Hamill
Getting out any weekly magazine requires many hours of reading, choosing, discarding, and thinking beyond the obvious. – Pete Hamill
The Anarchists set off World War I with a gunshot in Sarajevo – but they faded away. It wasn’t that the police drove them out of business. The ideology had nowhere to go except into permanent negativity. – Pete Hamill
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. – Pete Hamill
For me reading a book is what I like doing, curled up in a corner in a comfortable chair. – Pete Hamill
In the newspaper business, I was in the last generation before the arrival of the personnel manager. You were hired by editors – and editors who would take a chance on what they perceived to be talent and not hire a resume. – Pete Hamill
I think if you had to choose between running a tabloid and being president of the United States, of course you’d run the tabloid, especially in New York. – Pete Hamill
To me, doctors and nurses and teachers are heroes, doing often infinitely more difficult work than the more flamboyant kind of a hero. – Pete Hamill
When I was in the navy, I wanted to go to Paris and the Academie Julian. I never did. Mexico City took me instead. – Pete Hamill
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. – Pete Hamill
