Frank McCourt Quotations

They can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they'd be lost forever.

Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world

You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my advanced age, when you're staring into the grave.

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.

I admire certain priests and nuns who go off on their own and do God's work on their own, who help in the ghettos, but as far as the institution of the church is concerned, I think it is despicable.

I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.

Andy says, I don't understand how they can give loans to people who want to spend two weeks lying on the sand at the goddam Jersey shore and then turn down a woman with three kids hanging on by her fingernails.

I had no accomplishments except surviving. But that isn't enough in the community where I came from, because everybody was doing it. So I wasn't prepared for America, where everybody is glowing with good teeth and good clothes and food.

I'm more interested in writing than in performing.

I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching