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" 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. "

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" 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

Nothing

New York

Baseball

" My father and mother should have stayed in New York, where they met and married and where I was born. "

" Every life is a mystery. There is nobody whose life is normal and boring. "

" Just luxuriate in a certain memory, and the details will come. It's like a magnet attracting steel filings. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I didn't know you could write about yourself. Nobody ever told me about this. "

" I had moments with my father that were exquisite - the stories he told me about Cuchulain, the mythological Irish warrior, are still magical to me. "

" We were below welfare. We begged from people on welfare. My father tried to repair our shoes with pieces of bicycle tires. "

" Everyone has a story to tell. All you have to do is write it. But it's not that easy. "

" 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. "

" St. Patrick, bringing the religion to Ireland, this is what we should celebrate. "

" A lot of people say writers start losing their powers after 60 or 65. But I look at the best-seller list and see a book by that 14-year-old gymnast, Dominique Moceanu, and I think, 'Now, what's she going to tell the world? And these 25-year-old rock stars, what are they going to tell the world?' "

" At 66, you're supposed to die or get hemorrhoids. "

" If ever you are to be visited by the Holy Ghost, you should make certain you're sitting beside a fireman. "

" I was a houseman, the lowest. I was just above - in the hierarchy of jobs, I was just above the Puerto Rican dishwashers - just above, so I felt superior to them. "

" 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. "

" Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow. "

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

" People come up to me and talk about the alcoholism in their family. "

" It's like a series of waves hitting you. First, getting excerpted in the 'New Yorker' last summer, then getting published, then the best-seller list, the award, the movie deal, now this, a Pulitzer. "

" Autobiography should be more stringent. It should adhere more to the standards of journalism - assuming that journalism has the truth. The memoir gives you more scope, is more poetic, and allows you to play around with your own life. "

" I think there's something about the Irish experience - that we had to have a sense of humor or die. "

" The day I write my last word will be the day that I feel free. "

" I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine. "

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

" A funeral was a great form of entertainment. A wake was a great form of entertainment. "

" I certainly couldn't have written 'Angela's Ashes' when my mother was alive, because she would have been ashamed. "

" I'm a late bloomer. "

" I've had experiences on both sides of the ocean and various classrooms and bedrooms around New York. "