Frank McCourt Quotes
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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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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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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.
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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.
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We've had enough of the generals and movie stars. We want to hear about the ordinary people.
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I ate the sandwich.
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If I went to the pub lunch and cleared my head with a pint surely there would be an insight, a flash of inspiration. Surely. My money went over the bar. The pint came back. Nothing else.
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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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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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They tell me I'm on 'Politically Incorrect' with Ollie North. That should be a lot of fun.
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I'm more interested in writing than in performing.
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I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine.
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The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.
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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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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 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.
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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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My father and mother should have stayed in New York, where they met and married and where I was born.
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I didn't know you could write about yourself. Nobody ever told me about this.
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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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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 didn't have to struggle at all to get an agent and a publisher. Everything fell into my lap.
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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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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.