Frank McCourt Quotes
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I ate the sandwich.
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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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I had moments with my father that were exquisite - the stories he told me about Cuchulain, the mythological Irish warrior, are still magical to me.
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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.
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Worse than the ordinary, miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
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I've had experiences on both sides of the ocean and various classrooms and bedrooms around New York.
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I like the lemon meringue pie but I don't like the way Americans leave out the 'r' at the end of a word.
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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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They tell me I'm on 'Politically Incorrect' with Ollie North. That should be a lot of fun.
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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.
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The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.
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My mother had had six children in five and a half years, and three of them died in that time.
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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.
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The part of Limerick we lived in is Georgian, you know, those Georgian houses. You see them in pictures of Dublin.
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I wanted to be the Great Liberating Teacher, to raise them from their knees after days of drudgery in office and factories, to help them cast off their shackles, to lead them to the mountaintop, to breathe the air of freedom. Once their minds were clear of cant, they’d see me as a savior.
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I didn't know you could write about yourself. Nobody ever told me about this.
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I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine.
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I'm more interested in writing than in performing.
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There were a number of houses. When we first arrived in Limerick, it was a one-room affair with most of it taken up with a bed.
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If there was a circle, I was never a part of it. I prowled the periphery.
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I worked in a number of high schools in New York, and I wound up at Stuyvesant High School, which is known nationally for producing brilliant scientists and mathematicians, but I had writing classes. I thought I was teaching. They thought I was teaching, but I was learning.
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Why is it the minute I open my mouth the whole world is telling me they're Irish and we should all have a drink? It's not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you'd wonder how they'd get along if someone hadn't invented the hyphen.
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Everyone has a story to tell. All you have to do is write it. But it's not that easy.