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" The day I write my last word will be the day that I feel free. "

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" And, of course, they've always condemned dancing. You know, you might touch a member of the opposite sex. And you might get excited and you might do something natural. "

" 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. "

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" A funeral was a great form of entertainment. A wake was a great form of entertainment. "

" 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. "

" For some reason, I wrote about the bed we slept in when I was a kid. It was a half-acre of misery, that bed, sagging in the middle, red hair sticking out of the mattress, the spring gone and the fleas leaping all over the place. "

" 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. "

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

" I don't see myself as either Irish or American, I'm a New Yorker. "

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

" People come up to me and talk about the alcoholism in their family. "

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

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

" I'm a late bloomer. "

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

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

" 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. "

" We don't look at teachers as scholars the way they do in Europe. In Spain you're called a professor if you're a high school teacher, and they pay teachers - they pay teachers in Europe. "

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

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

" My father and mother should have stayed in New York, where they met and married and where I was born. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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