Frank McCourt Quotations

Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.

The sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice.

Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely.

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.

The main thing I am interested in is my experience as a teacher.

We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.

There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

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 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 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.

I can't go too much into my domestic life because there are ex-wives ready to do me in.

I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.

He came to the States in 1963, I think with a view to making up with my mother, but that didn't work. He came for three weeks, and drank his way all over Brooklyn. And went back... I went to his funeral in Belfast.

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.

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

I'm more interested in writing than in performing.

My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn.

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

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.

They all went into the bar business. Which was a mistake, because they began to sip at the merchandise and it set them back, set us all back. Well, them more than I.

I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so.

I'd just go into a room in my memory and just look around and start seeing things that I'd forgotten, like the alphabet on the blackboard in Irish, which we had to chant every day for months and months and months. I remember the Gaelic script and things like that. And this awful, putrid lavatory that we used outside." ()

I think that the Army, being drafted, was my escape route. I was in the Army for two years, and then I got the G.I. Bill, which enabled me to go to NYU and which enabled me to become a teacher. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't had the G.I. Bill." ()

I will have the faith... not the faith they want me to have, but another kind of faith which is of my own invention." ()

My mother died in New York... she was cremated, and we took her ashes to Ireland one week and scattered the ashes on her family's gravesite." ()

I was tormented. Fear and trembling. And a sense of doom. A literal belief in hell. Hell for eternity. With devils chasing you for eternity with pitchforks. I trembled. I couldn't go to sleep for fear I might die and wake up in hell. I was in agony." ()

I was beginning to think that you could somehow miraculously dig down into your memory and bring back stuff that is stored there." ()

You know how it is in Hollywood, everybody kisses everybody. It's a handshake in Ireland. And a kind of tentativeness. Except when it's mothers and small children." ()

We were just slogging on from day to day and making the best of it. But with a light at the end of the tunnel... AMERICA!" ()

Viva Los Dodgers has become one of the most anticipated events of the year. We're thrilled to continue this special tradition, ... The Dodgers take great pride in having strong ties to the Latino community and providing all of our fans with high-quality family entertainment all season long." ()

Teenagers have two moods: Horny and Hungry." ()

Something happened to the spirit in the famine, and they retreated into their caverns and into themselves. And they haven't come out." ()

This is an iconic team in Dodger history. It's not just any other team." ()

It's important to celebrate not just winning, but a type of winning we can respect. This is a team we can all relate to. They had that thing called character. This is a team worthy of this weekend's celebration." ()

All those smells... and the kids, we were the great unwashed... nobody ever knew what a shower was... We washed maybe from eyebrow to chin, week after week after week. Our crotches were innocent of water." ()

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

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 am teaching. Storytelling is teaching

I appealed to my mother. I told her it wasn't fair the way the whole family was invading my dreams and she said, Arrah, for the love o' God, drink your tea and go to school and stop tormenting us with your dreams.

Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him.

I know that big people don't like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How's school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.

There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore.

Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won't let them because there's nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking. Same thing with kids. Keep 'em busy or they might start thinking.

I must congratulate myself, in passing, for never having lost the ability to examine my conscience, never having lost the gift of finding myself wanting & defective. Why fear the criticism of others when you, yourself, are first out of the critical gate? If self-denigration is the race I am the winner, even before the starting gun. Collect the bets.

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.

I've stated before that my number one priority as the steward of the Dodgers is winning, and I believe that hiring Ned is a step in that direction. With his genuine passion for baseball, his intimate knowledge of all aspects of the game, and solid leadership skills, I am confident that Ned's experience will help the Dodgers put a winning team on the field, year-in and year-out.

The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.

In the high school classroom you are a drill sergent, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.

I don't believe in happiness anyway... it's too much of an American pastime, this search for happiness. Just forget happiness and enjoy your misery.

There’s no use saying anything in the schoolyard because there’s always someone with an answer and there’s nothing you can do but punch them in the nose and if you were to punch everyone who has an answer you’d be punching morning noon and night.

Love her as in childhood Through feeble, old and grey. For you’ll never miss a mother’s love Till she’s buried beneath the clay.

If you were mean to your parents, they'd give you a good belt in the gob and send you flying across the room.

I don't absolve my father completely of his responsibility for what he did to us I feel compassion, maybe. He had his demons. But I still can't understand how a man can walk away from children. And leave them to starve, as we nearly did, if it wasn't for my mother going out and begging.

There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it's been a minute since my last confession.

I am not living the American Dream; I am living the American fantasy.

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

When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.

Your mind is a treasure house that you should stock well and it's the one part of you the world can't interfere with.

Oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea?

People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all -- we were wet.

He sits in an old armchair in the corner covered with bits of blankets and a bucket behind the chair that stinks enough to make you sick and when you look at that old man in the dark corner you want to get a hose with hot water and strip him and wash him down and give him a big feed of rashers and eggs and mashed potatoes with loads of butter and salt and onions.I want to take the man from the Boer War and the pile of rags in the bed and put them in a big sunny house in the country with birds chirping away outside the window and a stream gurgling.

There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.

Before the famine, which was in the 1840s, that was an emotional turning point... There are various documents showing how the Elizabethan English, in particular, were shocked by Irish displays of affection, by the way women acted toward strangers, walking up and putting their arms around them and kissing them right full on the mouth.

I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family...

Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.

Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve.

I told her tea bags were just a convenience for people with busy lives and she said no one is so busy they can't take time to make a decent cup of tea and if you are that busy you don't deserve a decent cup of tea for what is it all about anyway? Are we put into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?

You have to give yourself credit, not too much because that would be bragging.

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

You never know when you might come home and find Mam sitting by the fire chatting with a woman and a child, strangers. Always a woman and child. Mam finds them wandering the streets and if they ask, Could you spare a few pennies, miss? her heart breaks. She never has money so she invites them home for tea and a bit of fried bread and if it's a bad night she'll let them sleep by the fire on a pile of rags in the corner. The bread she gives them always means less for us and if we complain she says there are always people worse off and we can surely spare a little from what we have.

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.

I am for who i was in the beginning but now is present and i exist in the future.

Keep scribbling! Something will happen.

The master says it's a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it's a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there's anyone in the world who would like us to live. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died for Ireland or the Faith. Dad says they were too young to die for anything. Mam says it was disease and starvation and him never having a job. Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap and goes for a long walk

I say, Billy, what’s the use in playing croquet when you’re doomed? He says, Frankie, what’s the use of not playing croquet when you’re doomed?

I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.

I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.

Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.

Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.

After a full belly all is poetry.

The English wouldn't give you the steam of their piss.

A mother's love is a blessing No matter where you roam. Keep her while you have her, You'll miss her when she's gone -- Angela's Ashes.

It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.

You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.