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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" We had nothing, no television, no radio, nothing to get in the way. We read by the streetlight at the top of the lane, and we acted out the stories. "

" 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. "

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

" Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow. "

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

" 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. "

" He came to the States in 1963, I think with a view to making up with my mother, but that didn't work. He came for three weeks, and drank his way all over Brooklyn. And went back... I went to his funeral in Belfast. "

" 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. "

" They tell me I'm on 'Politically Incorrect' with Ollie North. That should be a lot of fun. "

" 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. "

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

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

" My sister died in Brooklyn. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The main thing I am interested in is my experience as a teacher. "

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

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

" I didn't know you could write about yourself. Nobody ever told me about this. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" At 66, you're supposed to die or get hemorrhoids. "

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

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