Quotes from Frank McCourt

You can't teach in a vacuum. A good teacher relates the material to real life. You understand that, don't you?

A job is death without dignity.

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.

That's a name for gangsters and politicians.

think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland.

I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching.

Nobody ever told them they had a right to an opinion.

Samuel Beckett was saying, in a new biography, that he could remember being in the womb, which, of course, is a bit far-fetched. But he's an Irishman, so nothing's too far-fetched.

That IS what journal writing is all about—showing ourselves to God.

The boys from Staten Island would fill more body bags than Stuyvesant could ever imagine. Mechanics and plumbers had to fight while college students shook indignant fists, fornicated in the fields of Woodstock and sat in.

That's what he disliked about certain artists and writers. They interfered and pointed to everything as if you couldn't see it or read for yourself.

There's nothing worse in the world than to owe and be beholden to anyone.

There's no use asking more questions. If you ask a question they tell you it's a mystery, you'll understand when you grow up, be a good boy, ask your mother, ask your father, for the love o' Jesus leave me alone, go out and play.

Everything in my head was secondhand, too: Catholicism; Ireland's sad history, a litany of suffering and martyrdom drummed into me by priests, schoolmasters and parents who knew no better.

To enter a room is to move from one environment to another and that, for the teenager, can be traumatic. There be dragons, daily horrors from acne to zit.

There's something hostile about the way they enter and leave the room that tells you what they think of you. It could be your imagination and you try to figure out what will bring them over to your side. You try lessons that worked with other classes but even that doesn't help and it's because of that chemistry. They know when they have you on the run. They have instincts that detect your frustrations.

He drinks his stout and laughs that there's nothing like a great bloody steak of a Friday night and if that's the worst sin he ever commits he'll float to heaven body and soul, ha ha ha.

They said her duck recipe and the Chinese music were so dramatic everything else sounded anemic.

Bridey drags on her Woodbine, drinks her tea and declares that God is good. Mam says she's sure God is good for someone somewhere but He hasn't been seen lately in the lanes of Limerick. Bridey laughs. Oh, Angela, you could go to hell for that, and Mam says, Aren't I there already, Bridey?

She made tea in a teapot and couldn't help sniffing at the idea of tea bags. I told her tea bags were just a convenience for people with busy lives and she said no one is so busy they can't take time to make a decent cup of tea and if you are that busy you don't deserve a decent cup of tea for what is it all about anyway? Are we put into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?

The master says it's a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it's a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there's anyone in the world who would like us to live. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died for Ireland or the Faith.

With Angela drawn to the hangdog look and Malachy lonely after three months in jail, there was bound to be a knee-trmbler. A knee-trmbler is the act itself done up against a wall, man and woman up on their toes, straining so hard their knees tremble with the excitement that's in it.

When the dark clouds flutter like bats in my head I wish I could open a window and release them.

Oh God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt. And after the egg, is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh, warm bread and a mug of sweet, golden tea?