Quotes from Frank McCourt

Teachers have a million stories, but nobody consults them.

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

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

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 learned the significance of my own insignificant life.

I had never attended high school, but I was fairly well read.

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.

I never really fit in anywhere.

Every life is a mystery. There is nobody whose life is normal and boring.

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

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

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.

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

You have to give yourself credit, not too much because that would be bragging.

There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore.

Come here till I comb your hair, said Grandma. Look at that mop, it won't lie down. You didn't get that hair from my side of the family. That's that North of Ireland hair you got from your father. That's the kind of hair you see on Presbyterians. If your mother had married a proper decent Limerickman you wouldn't have this standing up, North of Ireland, Presbyterian hair.

Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.

I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family...

Andy says, I don't understand how they can give loans to people who want to spend two weeks lying on the sand at the goddam Jersey shore and then turn down a woman with three kids hanging on by her fingernails.

If ever you're getting a dog, Francis, make sure it's a Buddhist. Good-natured dogs, the Buddhists. Never, never get a Mahommedan. They'll eat you sleeping. Never a Catholic dog. They'll eat you every day including Fridays.

Rest your eyes and then read till they fall out of your head.

On the Left side of the blackboard I print a capital F on the right side another capital F. I draw an arrow from left to right, from FEAR to FREEDOM. I don't think anyone achieves complete freedom, but what I am trying to do with you is drive fear into a corner

If you were mean to your parents, they'd give you a good belt in the gob and send you flying across the room.

Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the rain.