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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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?' "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" I never really fit in anywhere. "

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

" I was just dreaming, and if, if I'd written the book and nobody wanted it, I would have put it in the drawer and said, 'Well, I did that.' "

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

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

" The uncluttered life is the key to a good memory. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "