I was born in 1935. But my mother and father – who were immigrants from Ireland – and everybody that I knew growing up in Brooklyn came out of the Depression, and they were remarkable people. – Pete Hamill
Sinatra slowly found a way to allow tenderness into the performance while remaining manly. 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. – Pete Hamill
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. – Pete Hamill
The blogosphere might be very useful as propaganda or as therapy. But it’s not journalism. – Pete Hamill
Mick Jagger’s fans bought records with their allowances. Sinatra’s people bought them out of wages. – Pete Hamill
The Huffingtonpost.com does not pay its writers. Tina Brown’s thedailybeast.com does pay its writers. You have to be paid because this is not a hobby. You have to keep that standard. You can’t ask grandpa to loan you money because you have to go to Afghanistan. I walked the picket line for that to continue. – Pete Hamill
The Tammany guys, many of them were corrupt. They were still around when I was a boy. You knew the Tammany guys’ name. – Pete Hamill
Boxing is one of those leftovers from a more primitive past that should be finished off and killed. I don’t love it anymore. – Pete Hamill
Bootleggers were romanticized by people like F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example. Gatsby is a bootlegger. And they were not thought of as evil criminals in the newspapers, either. There was a certain amount of affection for them. – Pete Hamill
The Irish fought the Italians until they started marrying them. And then they both fought the Jews until they started marrying them. – Pete Hamill
In 1962, I wrote a series about 42nd Street called ‘Welcome to Lostville.’ One result was that the young Bob Dylan read it and invited me to his first concert at Town Hall; the result was a kind of friendship that years later led to my liner notes for ‘Blood on the Tracks.’ – Pete Hamill
I always make a distinction between nostalgia and sentimentality. Nostalgia is genuine – you mourn things that actually happened. – Pete Hamill
People become writers in the first place by those things that hurt you into art, as Yeats said it. Then they become separated from what started out affecting them. Journalism forces you to look at the world so you don’t get cut off. – Pete Hamill
