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

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" 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 think there are two cities in the world - New York and Rome. "

" Mam was always saying we had a simple diet: tea and bread, bread and tea, a liquid and a solid, a balanced diet - what more do you need? Nobody got fat. "

" 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. "

" People who think I have insulted Ireland or Limerick or my family have not read the book! "

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

" The sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" Early in my teaching days, the kids asked me the meaning of a poem. I replied, 'I don't know any more than you do. I have ideas. What are your ideas?' I realized then that we're all in the same boat. What does anybody know? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm a late bloomer. "

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

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

" 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. "

" Way back in my mid-20s, I started making notes. I would just jot things down: lists of street names, songs, peculiar turns of speech, jokes, whatever. "

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

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

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

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

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