Pete Hamill Quotes (14 Quotes)


    One great example of the way Tweed really helped the Irish was when the water started to overflow from the Croton Reservoir, it went to certain parts of Manhattan but not to where the poor lived. The mythology of the dirty Irish developed because they had no water, not until Tweed, through aggravation or bribery, got the water to flow through poor neighborhoods.

    He steps on stage and draws the sword of rhetoric, and when he is through, someone is lying wounded and thousands of others are either angry or consoled.

    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.

    He became out of step with the basic audience, because they didn't believe it. And I think that was the beginning of the end of Winchell. I think it was a self-inflicted wound.

    Say what you will about him Ed Koch is still the best show in town.


    He was a very quiet guy, unlike the rest of the rabble, ... He had a low-key, wicked sense of humor. I had no idea that he was writing anything until someone called me up and said, 'Frank McCourt's written this amazing book,' which turned out to be 'Angela's Ashes.'

    New Yorkers, in general, love disaster. They love blizzards, power failures, etc. (I don't mean that they loved September 11.) A shared disaster brings them together more - ethnically, racially - because the disaster affects almost all of them, making no distinctions. Their manners are generally very good indeed. And their generosity can be without limits.

    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.

    It's a good demonstration of will for any terrorist outfit to consider. If they knocked out every subway line and all the bus terminals, New Yorkers would leave the house, moaning, and find their way to work. That's our tribe.

    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.

    If you're going to write about things that are as old as mankind, you've got to find a new, fresh way to write about them, to make people interested. Winchell found a way.

    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.

    This is truly marvelous work full of mystery, nostalgia, joy, The Color of Whimsy.

    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.


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