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

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" I'm a late bloomer. "

" I think there are two cities in the world - New York and Rome. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I learned the significance of my own insignificant life. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" People want real-life stories. "

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

" When I got out of the army, I had the G.I. Bill. Since I had no high school education or anything like that, I came to NYU, and they took a chance on me and let me in. "

" 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 thought everything would be different in America. It wasn't. "

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

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

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

" My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn. "

" 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.' "

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

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

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

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "