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

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

" There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd. "

" You sail into the harbor, and Staten Island is on your left, and then you see the Statue of Liberty. This is what everyone in the world has dreams of when they think about New York. And I thought, 'My God, I'm in Heaven. I'll be dancing down Fifth Avenue like Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers.' "

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

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

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

" I certainly couldn't have written 'Angela's Ashes' when my mother was alive, because she would have been ashamed. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

" I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That's what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" Certain citizens claimed I had disgraced the fair name of the city of Limerick, that I had attacked the church, that I had despoiled my mother's name, and that if I returned to Limerick, I would surely be found hanging from a lamppost. "

" The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. "

Happy Childhood

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

" If I have a cause, it's the cause of the teacher. "

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

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