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" A funeral was a great form of entertainment. A wake was a great form of entertainment. "
Frank McCourt
Funeral
Great
Entertainment
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Frank McCourt
New
New York
School
" 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
Believe
God
Reading
" Every life is a mystery. There is nobody whose life is normal and boring. "
Frank McCourt
Mystery
Boring
Life
" I learned the significance of my own insignificant life. "
Frank McCourt
Insignificant
Own
My Own
" I would dream of going up to the 'New York Times' and asking them if I could please be a copy boy or let me scrub the toilets or something like that. But I couldn't rise to those heights. "
Frank McCourt
Heights
New York
Me
" When I read about Joyce, I realised that there was no eight-till-one in his life: it was 24 hours a day for him. "
Frank McCourt
Life
24 Hours
About
" I don't know anything about a stock! "
Frank McCourt
About
Stock
Know
" I certainly couldn't have written 'Angela's Ashes' when my mother was alive, because she would have been ashamed. "
Frank McCourt
Ashes
Ashamed
Alive
" I can do no more than tell the truth. "
Frank McCourt
Truth
Than
Tell
" My dream was to have a Library of Congress catalogue number, that's all. "
Frank McCourt
Number
Dream
Congress
" 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
Snake
Stand
Me
" You look at passers-by in Rome and think, 'Do they know what they have here?' You can say the same about Philadelphia. Do people know what went on here? "
Frank McCourt
Think
You
Know
" Kids all want to look cool, as if knowledge is a great burden, but they're always looking around. They remember. "
Frank McCourt
Great
Cool
Looking
" 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. "
Frank McCourt
End
Door
Walking
" Early in my teaching days, the kids asked me the meaning of a poem. I replied, 'I don't know any more than you do. I have ideas. What are your ideas?' I realized then that we're all in the same boat. What does anybody know? "
Frank McCourt
Meaning
You
Ideas
" Scatter my ashes on the Shannon. "
Frank McCourt
Scatter
Ashes
" I became a teacher all right. I wanted to become a teacher because I had a misconception about it. I didn't know that I'd be going into - when I first became a high school teacher in New York, that I'd be going into a battle zone, and no one prepared me for that. "
Frank McCourt
High School
New York
School
" At 66, you're supposed to die or get hemorrhoids. "
Frank McCourt
Get
You
Supposed
" 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
Work
Dressed
Apple
" My mother had had six children in five and a half years, and three of them died in that time. "
Frank McCourt
Years
Three
Mother
" I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book. "
Frank McCourt
I Think
Book
Title
" 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
Teacher
Time
Walk
" We were below welfare. We begged from people on welfare. My father tried to repair our shoes with pieces of bicycle tires. "
Frank McCourt
Shoes
Bicycle
Father
" The uncluttered life is the key to a good memory. "
Frank McCourt
Life
Memory
Good Memory
" There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd. "
Frank McCourt
Absurdity
Absurd
Poverty
" 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. "
Frank McCourt
People
Thought
Writing
" I've had experiences on both sides of the ocean and various classrooms and bedrooms around New York. "
Frank McCourt
New York
Ocean
Sides
" I thought everything would be different in America. It wasn't. "
Frank McCourt
Be Different
Thought
Would
" I knew I had to find my own way of teaching. "
Frank McCourt
Knew
Teaching
Own
" St. Patrick, bringing the religion to Ireland, this is what we should celebrate. "
Frank McCourt
Should
Religion
Celebrate