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" 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. "

Frank McCourt

Church

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

" For some reason, I wrote about the bed we slept in when I was a kid. It was a half-acre of misery, that bed, sagging in the middle, red hair sticking out of the mattress, the spring gone and the fleas leaping all over the place. "

" That's what kept us going - a sense of absurdity, rather than humor. "

Frank McCourt

Going

Absurdity

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

" You're beginning to hear the tale of the common man and woman rather than the traditional memoir about the generals who just finished the war or the politicians who just rendered glorious service to the country. "

" The part of Limerick we lived in is Georgian, you know, those Georgian houses. You see them in pictures of Dublin. "

" I knew I had to find my own way of teaching. "

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

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

" Scatter my ashes on the Shannon. "

Frank McCourt

Scatter

Ashes

" Something happened when the memoirs of so-called ordinary people, like myself, suddenly hit the bestseller list. "

Frank McCourt

People

Memoirs

" My sister died in Brooklyn. "

" 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.' "

" You don't have to go fight bulls in Spain like Hemingway to write something great, or go off to war. It's right under your nose. "

Frank McCourt

You

Great

" I was ashamed of it, of the poverty I came from. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Frank McCourt

Business

Mistake

" The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. "

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

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

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" I'm a late bloomer. "

" We don't look at teachers as scholars the way they do in Europe. In Spain you're called a professor if you're a high school teacher, and they pay teachers - they pay teachers in Europe. "

" They tell me I'm on 'Politically Incorrect' with Ollie North. That should be a lot of fun. "

Frank McCourt

Should

North

" When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all. "

" In public schools, classes are bloated - it's ridiculous. "

" There's nothing in the world like getting up in front of a high-school classroom in New York City. They won't give you a break if you don't hold them. There's no escape. "

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