Frank McCourt quotes - page 2

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. (Frank McCourt)
Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him. View quote
Frank McCourt
After a full belly all is poetry. View quote
Frank McCourt
The main thing I am interested in is my experience as a teacher. View quote
Frank McCourt
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? View quote
Frank McCourt
We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely. View quote
Frank McCourt
You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my advanced age, when you're staring into the grave. View quote
Frank McCourt
I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book. View quote
Frank McCourt
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. View quote
Frank McCourt
I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so. View quote
Frank McCourt
I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book. (Frank McCourt)
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. View quote
Frank McCourt
My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn. View quote
Frank McCourt
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. View quote
Frank McCourt
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. View quote
Frank McCourt
I thought some day I'd run into June and find my tongue and we'd go to a movie together. I'd choose something foreign with subtitles to show how sophisticated I was and she'd admire me and let me kiss her in the dark, missing a dozen subtitles and the thread of the story. That wouldn't matter because we'd have plenty to talk about in a cozy Italian restaurant where candles flickered and her red hair twinkled back and who knows what that would lead to because that was as far as my dreams would go. View quote
Frank McCourt
If there was a circle, I was never a part of it. I prowled the periphery. View quote
Frank McCourt
If I went to the pub lunch and cleared my head with a pint surely there would be an insight, a flash of inspiration. Surely. My money went over the bar. The pint came back. Nothing else. View quote
Frank McCourt
I know it wasn't the dinner wine that had me against the wall in a fit of remorse. It was the thought of my mother being so lonesome she had to sit on a street bench, so lonesome she missed the company of a homeless shopping bag woman. Even in the bad days in Limerick she always had an open hand and an open door and why couldn't I be like that to her? View quote
Frank McCourt
I wanted to be the Great Liberating Teacher, to raise them from their knees after days of drudgery in office and factories, to help them cast off their shackles, to lead them to the mountaintop, to breathe the air of freedom. Once their minds were clear of cant, they'd see me as a savior. View quote
Frank McCourt
I put my books in a bag because I don't care anymore if people in the subway look at me admiringly. I can't hold on to a girl, I can't keep an office job, I make a fool of myself in my first literature class and I wonder why I left Limerick at all. [...] I could have read Jonathan Swift to my heart's content not giving a fiddler's fart whether he was a satirist or a seanachie. (Frank McCourt)
They know it's a forty-minute showdown, you versus them. ... They have you by the balls and you created the situation, man. You didn't have to talk to them like that. They don't care about your mood, your headache, your troubles. They have their own problems, and you are one of them. View quote
Frank McCourt
I ate the sandwich. View quote
Frank McCourt
It's not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you'd wonder how they'd get along if someone hadn't invented the hyphen. View quote
Frank McCourt
Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve. View quote
Frank McCourt