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" If I had millions and millions and millions of dollars, I'd leave a large portion to the 42nd Street library. That's why - that was my hangout, the reading rooms, the North and South reading rooms. I'd go there, and my God, I couldn't believe I had access to all of these books. That was my university. "

Frank McCourt

Believe

God

Reading

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

" 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. "

" Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks' Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely. "

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

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

Frank McCourt

Interested

Performing

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

Frank McCourt

People

Memoirs

" If I have a cause, it's the cause of the teacher. "

Frank McCourt

Teacher

Cause

" I would dream of going up to the 'New York Times' and asking them if I could please be a copy boy or let me scrub the toilets or something like that. But I couldn't rise to those heights. "

Frank McCourt

Heights

New York

" My mother had had six children in five and a half years, and three of them died in that time. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" People want real-life stories. "

" I can do no more than tell the truth. "

" 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. "

" I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That's what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church. "

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

" 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.' "

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

" 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 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. "

Frank McCourt

Snake

Stand

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