Quotes from Frank McCourt

When I read about Joyce, I realised that there was no eight-till-one in his life: it was 24 hours a day for him.

My mother had had six children in five and a half years, and three of them died in that time.

When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all.

Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.

When I first went up to see my editor, I was with my agent, and my editor said, 'Well, what have you been doing all these years?' And my agent said, 'He's been in recovery. From his childhood.'

I would dream of going up to the 'New York Times' and asking them if I could please be a copy boy or let me scrub the toilets or something like that. But I couldn't rise to those heights.

There were a number of houses. When we first arrived in Limerick, it was a one-room affair with most of it taken up with a bed.

The part of Limerick we lived in is Georgian, you know, those Georgian houses. You see them in pictures of Dublin.

Worse than the ordinary, miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.

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

A mother's love is a blessing No matter where you roam. Keep her while you have her, You'll miss her when she's gone -- Angela's Ashes.

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.

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

I didn't know you could write about yourself. Nobody ever told me about this.

And, of course, they've always condemned dancing. You know, you might touch a member of the opposite sex. And you might get excited and you might do something natural.

I was unloading sides of beef down on the docks when I decided enough was enough. By then, I'd done a lot of reading on my own, so I persuaded New York University to enroll me.

For some reason, I wrote about the bed we slept in when I was a kid. It was a half-acre of misery, that bed, sagging in the middle, red hair sticking out of the mattress, the spring gone and the fleas leaping all over the place.

I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.

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.

When I was a teacher, I'd walk into the classroom. I stood at the board. I was the man. I directed operations. I was an intellectual and artistic and moral traffic cop, and I - and I would direct the class, most of the time.

They all went into the bar business. Which was a mistake, because they began to sip at the merchandise and it set them back, set us all back. Well, them more than I.

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

People who think I have insulted Ireland or Limerick or my family have not read the book!