Pete Hamill Quotes

I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.

My journalist sensibilities have guided me toward the types of projects I've gone for, even though the projects have been fairly diverse. It always has to have that interesting to attract me, I think.

Journalists in newspapers and in many magazines are not permitted to be subjective and tell their readers what they think. Journalists have got to follow a very strict formulaic line, and here we come, these non-fiction writers, these former journalists who are using all the techniques that journalists are pretty much not allowed to use.

There is certainly no want of journalistic ambition among the purveyors of what is now called 'long-form,' nor of novelistic technique brought to bear on nonfiction, nor of outrage.

I never take ideas from the headlines. I feel that if a story is good enough, a real story that is, then it's already been covered by the media, and if it's not good enough, why would I want to bother with it?

I'm a journalist, I run to the fire, that's what we do.

Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room - and inside the character's heads.

I was never a good journalist, because I would make things up. A lot of people frowned on that, which is why I ended up in fiction.

I always wanted to be a serious journalist.

Having been a journalist for thirty-nine years, I've developed a pretty thick skin.

Good journalism, I think, represents life and if you try to organize something too neatly it usually blows up in your face and doesn't really happen the way you want it to.

I had - all my life, everybody who knew me thought that I would probably grow up to be a reporter, a newspaper reporter because we didn't have much television in those days.

I think journalism is a great way to do public service, to have an impact on your community.

I love to run smart essays and commentary. But it doesn't replace the other kind of reporting.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'.

I'm a journalist and author. I make my living by finding things out and writing about them.

Journalism is not just a cause, it's also a wacky profession.

Journalism is always the art of the incomplete. You get bits and pieces.

At the end of the day, there is still one function of journalism that cannot be computerized, and that is reporters. You're always going to need reporters.

I mean, journalism is very detailed... you try to get down in the weeds and sort out exactly what happened. And I don't think that a feature film is really a place where that happens.

My best stories come from well-placed sources who point me in the right direction.

I've never had any interest at all in being a journalist or writing some sort of historically accurate autobiography.

I'm an inexperienced reporter, and I'm still learning.

I think it's this congenital problem with journalism that we oversell the difference we make. We make small differences.

Whether it's long-form journalism or investigative journalism, it's no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem.