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" I was unloading sides of beef down on the docks when I decided enough was enough. By then, I'd done a lot of reading on my own, so I persuaded New York University to enroll me. "

Frank McCourt

Own

Enough

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

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

" I had no accomplishments except surviving. But that isn't enough in the community where I came from, because everybody was doing it. So I wasn't prepared for America, where everybody is glowing with good teeth and good clothes and food. "

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

Frank McCourt

Interested

Performing

" 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 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. "

Frank McCourt

Book

Say

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

" I thought everything would be different in America. It wasn't. "

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

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

" The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" When I was a kid, I was a pretty good runner, and there was nothing like winning a race. "

Frank McCourt

Good

Nothing

" 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. "

" 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 don't know anything about a stock! "

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

" 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'm always a great student of writers' work habits. Balzac sat at his desk dressed in a monk's robe, and he always had to have a rotten apple on his desk. The smell of the apple inspired him somehow. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I never really fit in anywhere. "