Quotes from Michael Patrick MacDonald

I remember hating having to cross over the Broadway Bridge again, having to leave the peninsula neighborhood and go back to my apartment in downtown Boston.

It's funny, I thought, how the people who seem the meanest, the people we want nothing to do with, might be in the most pain.

I stared at them for a good long time, wondering if they didn't know how to use their wings, of if they just didn't know they had them, until it was too late to save themselves.

When the thousands of people sang the national anthem, with their right hands over their chest, I cried. It was as if we were singing about an America that we wanted but didn't have, especially the part about the land of the free.

But the general feeling in the neighborhood was that school was for suckers. The dropouts were the ones who said that the most, and of course they usually looked as if they were having the most fun, wearing the best clothes, and making the most loot from drugs and petty scams. Ma said Kathy was starting to get into the drugs, but I already knew that. She said she'd heard that the 8th Street gang was

Someone told me you were worshipping the devil with the punk rocks! he said, opening the jug. Ma walked into the apartment, and Grandpa repeated that I'd joined the devil-worshippers. With the punk rocks, he added proudly, liked he'd copped on to a new phenomenon.