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" 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. "
Frank McCourt
You
Touch
Sex
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" You sail into the harbor, and Staten Island is on your left, and then you see the Statue of Liberty. This is what everyone in the world has dreams of when they think about New York. And I thought, 'My God, I'm in Heaven. I'll be dancing down Fifth Avenue like Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers.' "
Frank McCourt
Sail
New York
God
" On the last day of my teaching career, I was sitting in my apartment, having a glass of wine, thinking I'm glad I did it, that I had been somehow useful, that I had learned something. "
Frank McCourt
Day
Career
Wine
" My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn. "
Frank McCourt
Long Time
Time
Childhood
" The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. "
Frank McCourt
Worth
Happy Childhood
Happy
" If you have a class of 35 children, and they're all smiling, and there's one little bastard, and he's just staring at you as if to say 'Show me', then he's the one you think about going home on the train. "
Frank McCourt
Think
Home
Me
" My dream was to have a Library of Congress catalogue number, that's all. "
Frank McCourt
Number
Dream
Congress
" 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
" There was a kind of madness in the country. Eamon De Valera, the prime minister, had this vision of an Ireland where we'd all be in some kind of native costume - which doesn't exist - and we'd be dancing at the crossroads, babbling away in Gaelic, going to Mass, everyone virginal and pure. "
Frank McCourt
Kind
Country
Vision
" I can do no more than tell the truth. "
Frank McCourt
Truth
Than
Tell
" Teachers have a million stories, but nobody consults them. "
Frank McCourt
Them
Million
Stories
" I didn't have to struggle at all to get an agent and a publisher. Everything fell into my lap. "
Frank McCourt
Everything
Agent
Struggle
" 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
Name
Mother
Hanging
" Even when I went to the Lion's Head in the Village, where all you journalists would hang out, I was always peripheral. I was never really part of anything except the classroom. That's where I belonged. "
Frank McCourt
Village
You
Lion
" I'm more interested in writing than in performing. "
Frank McCourt
Interested
More
Performing
" Mam was always saying we had a simple diet: tea and bread, bread and tea, a liquid and a solid, a balanced diet - what more do you need? Nobody got fat. "
Frank McCourt
Bread
Fat
Saying
" I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so. "
Frank McCourt
Years
Been
Notebooks
" Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow. "
Frank McCourt
Hard
Happiness
Recall
" 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
" 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
" I had never attended high school, but I was fairly well read. "
Frank McCourt
High School
School
Well
" I was just dreaming, and if, if I'd written the book and nobody wanted it, I would have put it in the drawer and said, 'Well, I did that.' "
Frank McCourt
Just
Dreaming
Book
" I didn't know you could write about yourself. Nobody ever told me about this. "
Frank McCourt
You
Write
Nobody
" 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
Prize
Still
Won
" I knew I had to find my own way of teaching. "
Frank McCourt
Knew
Teaching
Own
" 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. "
Frank McCourt
Book
Experience
Kind
" 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. "
Frank McCourt
Brooklyn
Mother
Think
" The part of Limerick we lived in is Georgian, you know, those Georgian houses. You see them in pictures of Dublin. "
Frank McCourt
Houses
Know
Lived
" It gives me a very keen satisfaction that, after listening to my blather all those years, former students are now seeing that I wrote a book, that I did have it in me. "
Frank McCourt
Book
Listening
Seeing
" When I first went up to see my editor, I was with my agent, and my editor said, 'Well, what have you been doing all these years?' And my agent said, 'He's been in recovery. From his childhood.' "
Frank McCourt
Doing
You
Said
" 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