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I'm not one of those James Joyce intellectuals who can stand back and look at the whole edifice... It was a slow process for me to just crawl out of it, like a snake leaving his skin behind.
Frank McCourt -
I didn't have to struggle at all to get an agent and a publisher. Everything fell into my lap.
Frank McCourt
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My father and mother should have stayed in New York, where they met and married and where I was born.
Frank McCourt -
I just wrote the book and was amazed and astounded that it became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. It still hasn't sunk in.
Frank McCourt -
We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.
Frank McCourt -
I'm more interested in writing than in performing.
Frank McCourt -
If I had millions and millions and millions of dollars, I'd leave a large portion to the 42nd Street library. That's why - that was my hangout, the reading rooms, the North and South reading rooms. I'd go there, and my God, I couldn't believe I had access to all of these books. That was my university.
Frank McCourt -
My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn.
Frank McCourt
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We've had enough of the generals and movie stars. We want to hear about the ordinary people.
Frank McCourt -
For some reason, I had a responsibility to my family and the people who lived around me. I felt that I had to convey their dignity - the way they dealt with adversity and poverty - and their good humor.
Frank McCourt -
I think there's something about the Irish experience - that we had to have a sense of humor or die.
Frank McCourt -
I think there are two cities in the world - New York and Rome.
Frank McCourt -
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.
Frank McCourt -
We had nothing, no television, no radio, nothing to get in the way. We read by the streetlight at the top of the lane, and we acted out the stories.
Frank McCourt
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I was unloading sides of beef down on the docks when I decided enough was enough. By then, I'd done a lot of reading on my own, so I persuaded New York University to enroll me.
Frank McCourt -
When I was a teacher, I'd walk into the classroom. I stood at the board. I was the man. I directed operations. I was an intellectual and artistic and moral traffic cop, and I - and I would direct the class, most of the time.
Frank McCourt -
I hated school in Ireland.
Frank McCourt -
I'm always a great student of writers' work habits. Balzac sat at his desk dressed in a monk's robe, and he always had to have a rotten apple on his desk. The smell of the apple inspired him somehow.
Frank McCourt -
You don't have to go fight bulls in Spain like Hemingway to write something great, or go off to war. It's right under your nose.
Frank McCourt -
But I don't know how I'll ever get a college degree and rise in the world with no high school diploma and eyes like piss holes in the snow, as everyone tells me.
Frank McCourt
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Certain citizens claimed I had disgraced the fair name of the city of Limerick, that I had attacked the church, that I had despoiled my mother's name, and that if I returned to Limerick, I would surely be found hanging from a lamppost.
Frank McCourt -
Ireland, once you live there, you're seduced by it.
Frank McCourt -
If ever you are to be visited by the Holy Ghost, you should make certain you're sitting beside a fireman.
Frank McCourt -
I couldn't fit in the Irish community in New York. I was never one of the boys because they would talk about baseball or basketball, and I knew nothing about it.
Frank McCourt