Frank McCourt Quotes

Before the famine, which was in the 1840s, that was an emotional turning point ... There are various documents showing how the Elizabethan English, in particular, were shocked by Irish displays of affection, by the way women acted toward strangers, walking up and putting their arms around them and kissing them right full on the mouth.

You never know when you might come home and find Mam sitting by the fire chatting with a woman and a child, strangers. Always a woman and child. Mam finds them wandering the streets and if they ask, Could you spare a few pennies, miss? her heart breaks. She never has money so she invites them home for tea and a bit of fried bread and if it's a bad night she'll let them sleep by the fire on a pile of rags in the corner. The bread she gives them always means less for us and if we complain she says there are always people worse off and we can surely spare a little from what we have.

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Dad says I'll understand when I grow up. He tells me that all the time now and I want to be big like him so that I can understand everything. It must be lovely to wake up in the morning and understand everything. I wish I could be like all the big people in the church, standing and kneeling and praying and understanding everything.

Saturday night when you have a few shillings in your pocket is the most delicious night of the week.

If 'tis a sin, I don't give a Fiddler's fart!

Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him.

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.

When she's not talking to him the house is heavy and cold and we know we're not supposed to talk to him either for fear she'll give us the bitter look. We know Dad has done the bad thing and we know you can make anyone suffer by not talking to him. Even little Michael knows that when Dad does the bad thing you don't talk to him from Friday to Monday and when he tries to lift you to his lap you run to Mam.

Ooh, aren't we getting solemn, and where did I leave my soapbox? Look

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.

There's no use saying anything in the schoolyard because there's always someone with an answer and there's nothing you can do but punch them in the nose and if you were to punch everyone who has an answer you'd be punching morning noon and night.

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.

The sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice.

You, the privileged, the chosen, the pampered, with nothing to do but go to school, hang out, do a little studying, go to college, get into a money-making racket, grow into your fat forties, still whining, still complaining, when there are millions around the world who'd offer fingers and toes to be in your seats, nicely clothed, well fed, with the world by the balls.

Inertia is, perhaps, the single most powerful stumbling block to writing. It takes energy, courage, patience, and commitment to keep writing in your journal. It's no small thing to open doors, let down barriers, enter sealed rooms, and walk obscure avenues of memory that haven't been traveled in years - or perhaps ever been traveled.

What are they, Dad? Cows, son. What are cows, Dad? Cows are cows, son. We

For many writers, the journal is their opportunity to be honest with them- selves - the greatest test of all.

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.

After a full belly all is poetry.

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

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

I'm in New York, land of the free and home of the brave, but I'm supposed to behave as if I were in Limerick at all times.

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

Through journal writing, you'll discover how to get more benefit from everything that you've experienced. In the process, you'll discover that what you've learned from being a survivor has enriched your life beyond anything you've ever imagined.

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

Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won't let them because there's nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking. Same thing with kids. Keep 'em busy or they might start thinking.

I am not living the American Dream; I am living the American fantasy.

Stock your minds and you can move through the world resplendent.

He sits in an old armchair in the corner covered with bits of blankets and a bucket behind the chair that stinks enough to make you sick and when you look at that old man in the dark corner you want to get a hose with hot water and strip him and wash him down and give him a big feed of rashers and eggs and mashed potatoes with loads of butter and salt and onions.
I want to take the man from the Boer War and the pile of rags in the bed and put them in a big sunny house in the country with birds chirping away outside the window and a stream gurgling.

If everyone moved on and up and out who would teach the children?

Keep scribbling! Something will happen.

He knows how it is to leave Ireland, did it himself and never got over it. You live in Los Angeles with sun and palm trees day in day out and you ask God if there's any chance He could give you one soft rainy Limerick day

A job is death without dignity.

I admire certain priests and nuns who go off on their own and do God's work on their own, who help in the ghettos, but as far as the institution of the church is concerned, I think it is despicable.

Teaching is bringing the news.

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.

You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.

Clarke, define resplendent. I think it's shining, sir. Pithy, Clarke, but adequate. McCourt, give us a sentence with pithy. Clarke is pithy but adequate, sir. Adroit, McCourt. You have a mind for the priesthood, my boy, or politics. Think of that.

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.

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

People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.
Above all
we were wet.

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.

Women stand with their arms folded chatting. They don't sit because all they do is stay at home, take care of the children, clean the house and cook a bit and the men need the chairs. The men sit because they are worn out from walking to the Labour Exchange every morning to sign for the dole, discussing the world's pro less and wondering what to do with the rest of the day.

I say, Billy, what's the use in playing croquet when you're doomed?
He says, Frankie, what's the use of not playing croquet when you're doomed?

I don't give a fiddler's fart!

I don't absolve my father completely of his responsibility for what he did to us I feel compassion, maybe. He had his demons. But I still can't understand how a man can walk away from children. And leave them to starve, as we nearly did, if it wasn't for my mother going out and begging.

There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me.

I can't go too much into my domestic life because there are ex-wives ready to do me in.

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.

I know that big people don't like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How's school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.

Here I am looking at my lovely ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, in her white dress, singing Protestant hymns with the choir at the Plymouth Church of the Brethren when I should be at Mass praying for the repose of the soul of my mother, Angela McCourt, mother of seven, believer, sinner, though when I contemplate her seventy-three years on this earth I can't believe the Lord God Almighty on His throne would even dream of consigning her to the flames. A God like that wouldn't deserve the time of day.

There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.

Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks' Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely.

I don't believe in happiness anyway ... it's too much of an American pastime, this search for happiness. Just forget happiness and enjoy your misery.

In New York, with Prohibition in full swing, he thought he had died and gone o hell for his sins. Then he discovered speakeasies and he rejoiced.

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

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

I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so.

Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world

We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.

Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.

Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve.

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

I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin

he'll make Catholics of us,

I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That's what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church.

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

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

It's lovely to know that the world can't interfere with the inside of your head.

You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my advanced age, when you're staring into the grave.

Love her as in childhood
Through feeble, old and grey.
For you'll never miss a mother's love
Till she's buried beneath the clay.

I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching.

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.

Also, said Freddie, I work nights to make a living and pay my way through college. You know what that's like, Mr. McCourt. I don't see what that has to do with your writing. Also, it's not easy when you're black in this society. Oh, Christ, Freddie. It's not easy being anything in this society. All right. You want an A? You'll get it. I don't want to be accused of bigotry. No, I don't want it just because you're pissed off or because I'm black. I want it because I deserve it. I

A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse

JESUS & THE WEATHER

I don't think Jesus Who is Our Lord would have liked the weather in Limerick because it's always raining and the Shannon keeps the whole city damp. My father says the Shannon is a killer river because it killed my two brothers. When you look at pictures of Jesus He's always wandering around ancient Israel in a sheet. It never rains there and you never hear of anyone coughing or getting consumption or anything like that and no one has a job there because all they do is stand around and eat manna and shake their fists and go to crucifixions.

Anytime Jesus got hungry all He had to do was go up the road to a fig tree or an orange tree and have His fill. If He wanted a pint He could wave His hand over a big glass and there was the pint. Or He could visit Mary Magdalene and her sister, Martha, and they'd give Him His dinner no questions asked and He'd get his feet washed and dried with Mary Magdalene's hair while Martha washed the dishes, which I don't think is fair. Why should she have to wash the dishes while her sister sits out there chatting away with Our Lord? It's a good thing Jesus decided to be born Jewish in that warm place because if he was born in Limerick he'd catch the consumption and be dead in a month and there wouldn't be any Catholic Church and there wouldn't be any Communion or Confirmation and we wouldn't have to learn the catechism and write compositions about Him.

The End.

First day of your teaching you are to stand at your classroom door and let your students know how happy you are to see them. Stand, I say. Any playwright will tell you that when the actor sits down the play sits down. The best move of all is to establish yourself as a presence and to do it outside in the hallway. Outside, I say. That's your territory and when you're out there you'll be seen as a strong teacher, fearless, ready to face the swarm. That's what a class is, a swarm. And you're a warrior teacher. It's something people don't think about. Your territory is like your aura, it goes with you everywhere, in the hallways, on the stairs and, assuredly, in the classroom.

I'm not one of those James Joyce intellectuals who can stand back and look at the whole edifice ... It was a slow process for me to just crawl out of it, like a snake leaving his skin behind.

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 appealed to my mother. I told her it wasn't fair the way the whole family was invading my dreams and she said, Arrah, for the love o' God, drink your tea and go to school and stop tormenting us with your dreams.

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 I had the money I could buy a torch and read till dawn. In America a torch is called a flashlight. A biscuit is called a cookie, a bun is a roll. Confectionery is pastry and minced meat is ground. Men wear pants instead of trousers and they'll even say this pant leg is shorter than the other which is silly. When I hear them saying pant leg I feel like breathing faster. The lift is an elevator and if you want a WC or a lavatory you have to say bathroom even if there isn't a sign of a bath there. And no one dies in America, they pass away or they're deceased and when they die the body, which is called the remains, is taken to a funeral home where people just stand around and look at it and no one sings or tells a story or takes a drink and then it's taken away in a casket to be interred. They don't like saying coffin and they don't like saying buried. They never say graveyard. Cemetery sounds nicer.

They can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they'd be lost forever.

Think I am? Smothered in fancy furs? The food churned in my stomach. I gagged. I ran to her backyard and threw it all up. Out she came. Look at what he did. Thrun up his First Communion breakfast. Thrun up the body and blood of Jesus. I have God in me backyard. What am I goin' to do? I'll take him to the Jesuits for they know the sins of the Pope himself.

Mikey's father, champion of all pint drinkers, is like my uncle Pa Keating, he doesn't give a fiddler's fart what the world says and that's the way I'd like to be myself.

I've stated before that my number one priority as the steward of the Dodgers is winning, and I believe that hiring Ned is a step in that direction. With his genuine passion for baseball, his intimate knowledge of all aspects of the game, and solid leadership skills, I am confident that Ned's experience will help the Dodgers put a winning team on the field, year-in and year-out.

This is the situation in the public schools of America: The farther you travel from the classroom the greater your financial and professional rewards.

There are boys here who have to mend their shoes whatever way they can. There are boys in this class with no shoes at all. It's not their fault and it's no shame. Our Lord had no shoes. He died shoeless. Do you see Him hanging on the cross sporting shoes? Do you, boys?

I'm learning. The mick from the lanes of Limerick letting the envy hang out. I'm dealing with first-and second-generation immigrants, like myself, but I've also got the middle classes and the upper middle classes and I'm sneering. I don't want to sneer but old habits die hard. It's the resentment. Not even anger. Just resentment. I shake my head over the things that concern them, that middle-class stuff, it's too hot, it's too cold and this is not the toothpaste I like. Here am I after three decades in America still happy to be able to turn on the electric light or reach for a towel after the shower.