Frank McCourt Quotes
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I think there are two cities in the world - New York and Rome.
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I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That's what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church.
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I was just dreaming, and if, if I'd written the book and nobody wanted it, I would have put it in the drawer and said, 'Well, I did that.'
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It gives me a very keen satisfaction that, after listening to my blather all those years, former students are now seeing that I wrote a book, that I did have it in me.
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If ever you are to be visited by the Holy Ghost, you should make certain you're sitting beside a fireman.
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When I first went up to see my editor, I was with my agent, and my editor said, 'Well, what have you been doing all these years?' And my agent said, 'He's been in recovery. From his childhood.'
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There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.
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I know that big people don't like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How's school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.
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I knew I had to find my own way of teaching.
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I don't know anything about a stock!
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Something happened when the memoirs of so-called ordinary people, like myself, suddenly hit the bestseller list.
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My sister died in Brooklyn.
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In public schools, classes are bloated - it's ridiculous.
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At 66, you're supposed to die or get hemorrhoids.
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I don't know what it means and I don't care because it's Shakespeare and it's like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words.
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When I got out of the army, I had the G.I. Bill. Since I had no high school education or anything like that, I came to NYU, and they took a chance on me and let me in.
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We were below welfare. We begged from people on welfare. My father tried to repair our shoes with pieces of bicycle tires.
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O'Casey was writing about people in the streets and his mother and dying babies and poverty. So that astounded me because I thought you could only write about English matters.
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Every life is a mystery. There is nobody whose life is normal and boring.
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The uncluttered life is the key to a good memory.
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I certainly couldn't have written 'Angela's Ashes' when my mother was alive, because she would have been ashamed.
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I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family.
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First of all there is always that artistic challenge of creating something. Or the particular experience to take slum life in that period and make something out of it in the form of a book. And then I felt some kind of responsibility to my family.
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No, young man. No jokes here. There's a time and place. When you say something in class they take you seriously. You're the teacher. You say you went out with a sheep and they’re going to swallow every word. They don’t know the mating habits of the Irish.