Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" We were supposed to stay over in Boston, but when Scribners heard I'd won the Pulitzer, they told me to get on a plane - that Katie Couric wanted my body. And when Katie Couric wants your body, you get moving right away. "

Related Quotes:

" I became a teacher all right. I wanted to become a teacher because I had a misconception about it. I didn't know that I'd be going into - when I first became a high school teacher in New York, that I'd be going into a battle zone, and no one prepared me for that. "

Frank McCourt

High School

New York

School

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

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

" 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 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. "

" One day a week should be set aside for field trips. "

" 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. "

" I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine. "

" Ireland, once you live there, you're seduced by it. "

" I never really fit in anywhere. "

" My sister died in Brooklyn. "

" 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. "

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

" There's nothing in the world like getting up in front of a high-school classroom in New York City. They won't give you a break if you don't hold them. There's no escape. "

" 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

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

Frank McCourt

Interested

Performing

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

" I'm a late bloomer. "

" 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.' "

" 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? "

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

" When I came to America, I dreamed bigger dreams. "

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

" 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. "

" I had moments with my father that were exquisite - the stories he told me about Cuchulain, the mythological Irish warrior, are still magical to me. "

" I had no accomplishments except surviving. But that isn't enough in the community where I came from, because everybody was doing it. So I wasn't prepared for America, where everybody is glowing with good teeth and good clothes and food. "

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

" For some reason, I had a responsibility to my family and the people who lived around me. I felt that I had to convey their dignity - the way they dealt with adversity and poverty - and their good humor. "

" Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks' Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely. "

" 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. "