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Worse than the ordinary, miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
Frank McCourt -
We were supposed to stay over in Boston, but when Scribners heard I'd won the Pulitzer, they told me to get on a plane - that Katie Couric wanted my body. And when Katie Couric wants your body, you get moving right away.
Frank McCourt
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I never expected to write a book about a slum in Ireland that was going to catapult me, as they say, into some kind of - onto the best seller list.
Frank McCourt -
I was a houseman, the lowest. I was just above - in the hierarchy of jobs, I was just above the Puerto Rican dishwashers - just above, so I felt superior to them.
Frank McCourt -
The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.
Frank McCourt -
He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
Frank McCourt -
There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.
Frank McCourt -
Even when I went to the Lion's Head in the Village, where all you journalists would hang out, I was always peripheral. I was never really part of anything except the classroom. That's where I belonged.
Frank McCourt
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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.
Frank McCourt -
I like the lemon meringue pie but I don't like the way Americans leave out the 'r' at the end of a word.
Frank McCourt -
If somebody wants me to speak in, say, Chicago, a limousine picks me up at the door to brings me to the airport. I fly at the front of the plane, and a limousine meets me at the other end to take me to a grand hotel, and usually an envelope is left for me with a per diem, maybe $150-a-day walking around money, and then I go home.
Frank McCourt -
I didn't know you could write about yourself. Nobody ever told me about this.
Frank McCourt -
Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.
Frank McCourt -
For some reason, I wrote about the bed we slept in when I was a kid. It was a half-acre of misery, that bed, sagging in the middle, red hair sticking out of the mattress, the spring gone and the fleas leaping all over the place.
Frank McCourt
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Mam was always saying we had a simple diet: tea and bread, bread and tea, a liquid and a solid, a balanced diet - what more do you need? Nobody got fat.
Frank McCourt -
People come up to me and talk about the alcoholism in their family.
Frank McCourt -
Sure, I went through my 'J'accuse' phase. I was so angry for so long, I could hardly have a conversation without getting into an argument. And it was only when I felt I could finally distance myself from my past that I began to write about what happened - not just to me, but to lots of young people. I think my story is a cautionary tale.
Frank McCourt -
I've had experiences on both sides of the ocean and various classrooms and bedrooms around New York.
Frank McCourt -
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.
Frank McCourt -
And, of course, they've always condemned dancing. You know, you might touch a member of the opposite sex. And you might get excited and you might do something natural.
Frank McCourt
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There was a kind of madness in the country. Eamon De Valera, the prime minister, had this vision of an Ireland where we'd all be in some kind of native costume - which doesn't exist - and we'd be dancing at the crossroads, babbling away in Gaelic, going to Mass, everyone virginal and pure.
Frank McCourt -
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.
Frank McCourt -
A funeral was a great form of entertainment. A wake was a great form of entertainment.
Frank McCourt -
When I read about Joyce, I realised that there was no eight-till-one in his life: it was 24 hours a day for him.
Frank McCourt