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" 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. "

Frank McCourt

New

Summer

Award

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

" I wanted to avoid all that literary stuff. I didn't want the self pity of 'The Portrait,' all the moaning and the whingeing. I'm not knocking Joyce: we all owe him a debt. He's the one who made so much possible. "

" A lot of people say writers start losing their powers after 60 or 65. But I look at the best-seller list and see a book by that 14-year-old gymnast, Dominique Moceanu, and I think, 'Now, what's she going to tell the world? And these 25-year-old rock stars, what are they going to tell the world?' "

" On the last day of my teaching career, I was sitting in my apartment, having a glass of wine, thinking I'm glad I did it, that I had been somehow useful, that I had learned something. "

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

" 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 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 dream was to have a Library of Congress catalogue number, that's all. "

" Teachers have a million stories, but nobody consults them. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I'm a late bloomer. "

" If you have a class of 35 children, and they're all smiling, and there's one little bastard, and he's just staring at you as if to say 'Show me', then he's the one you think about going home on the train. "

Frank McCourt

Think

Home

" 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. "

" If ever you are to be visited by the Holy Ghost, you should make certain you're sitting beside a fireman. "

" 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. "

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

" I was a houseman, the lowest. I was just above - in the hierarchy of jobs, I was just above the Puerto Rican dishwashers - just above, so I felt superior to them. "

" 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. "

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

" I don't know anything about a stock! "

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

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

" The part of Limerick we lived in is Georgian, you know, those Georgian houses. You see them in pictures of Dublin. "

" 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

" 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. "

Frank McCourt

Business

Mistake