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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

" The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. "

Happy Childhood

" I never really fit in anywhere. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I don't see myself as either Irish or American, I'm a New Yorker. "

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

" 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. "

" We were supposed to stay over in Boston, but when Scribners heard I'd won the Pulitzer, they told me to get on a plane - that Katie Couric wanted my body. And when Katie Couric wants your body, you get moving right away. "

" I think that's why you see so many Americans in Dublin look so sad: they are looking for the door through which they can begin to understand this place. I tell them, 'Go to the races.' I think it's the best place to start understanding the Irish. "

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

" I couldn't even pick up the newspaper without saying, 'This is a fine piece of writing. I wish to hell I could write like this.' "

" 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. "

" I hated school in Ireland. "

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

" When I came to America, I dreamed bigger dreams. "

" Sure, I went through my 'J'accuse' phase. I was so angry for so long, I could hardly have a conversation without getting into an argument. And it was only when I felt I could finally distance myself from my past that I began to write about what happened - not just to me, but to lots of young people. I think my story is a cautionary tale. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" We've had enough of the generals and movie stars. We want to hear about the ordinary people. "

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

" 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. "

" I'm more interested in writing than in performing. "

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

" Some, like Mother Teresa, are born with a gene to help the poor, and some are born with a gene to write. I was born with a gene to tell my story, and I just had to. "

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