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" I had never attended high school, but I was fairly well read. "

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" 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. "

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

" My sister died in Brooklyn. "

" 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. "

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

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

" When I got out of the army, I had the G.I. Bill. Since I had no high school education or anything like that, I came to NYU, and they took a chance on me and let me in. "

" Kids all want to look cool, as if knowledge is a great burden, but they're always looking around. They remember. "

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

" People want real-life stories. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" There were a number of houses. When we first arrived in Limerick, it was a one-room affair with most of it taken up with a bed. "

" One day a week should be set aside for field trips. "

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

" 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. "

" I never expected to write a book about a slum in Ireland that was going to catapult me, as they say, into some kind of - onto the best seller list. "

" 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. "

" For some reason, I had a responsibility to my family and the people who lived around me. I felt that I had to convey their dignity - the way they dealt with adversity and poverty - and their good humor. "

" Ireland, once you live there, you're seduced by it. "

" 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. "

" I learned the significance of my own insignificant life. "

" I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book. "

" 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. "

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

" I didn't have to struggle at all to get an agent and a publisher. Everything fell into my lap. "

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