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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. "

Happy Childhood

" When I was a kid, I was a pretty good runner, and there was nothing like winning a race. "

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

" 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 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 sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" I was ashamed of it, of the poverty I came from. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Worse than the ordinary, miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 can't go too much into my domestic life because there are ex-wives ready to do me in. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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