Quotes from Frank McCourt

That's what kept us going - a sense of absurdity, rather than humor.

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

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

I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.'

When I came to America, I dreamed bigger dreams.

I was just dreaming, and if, if I'd written the book and nobody wanted it, I would have put it in the drawer and said, 'Well, I did that.'

Even when I went to the Lion's Head in the Village, where all you journalists would hang out, I was always peripheral. I was never really part of anything except the classroom. That's where I belonged.

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.

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.

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

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

After a full belly all is poetry.

I am for who i was in the beginning but now is present and i exist in the future.