Frank McCourt

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

“When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.”

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

“There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.”

“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”

“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.”

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

“I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas, it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

“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.”

“A mother's love is a blessingNo matter where you roam.Keep her while you have her,You'll miss her when she's gone.”

“Keep scribbling! Something will happen.”

“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.”

“Nói chung, giáo dục là gì? Chúng ta làm gì trong trường này? Các em có thể nói rằng các em muốn tốt nghiệp để lên được đại học, chuẩn bị sự nghiệp. Nhưng, các em thân mến ạ, còn hơn thế nữa cơ. Thầy đã phải tự hỏi mình làm cái quái quỷ gi trong lớp này. Thầy đã lập cho mình một phương trình. Bên trái tấm bảng thầy viết một chữ S, bên phải một chữ T. Thầy vạch một mũi tên từ trái sang phải, từ SỢ HÃI sang TỰ DO.Thầy không nghĩ rằng có ai đạt được tự do hoàn toàn, nhưng điều thầy cùng làm với các em là xua nỗi sợ hãi vào một góc.”

“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.”

“But I don't know how I'll ever get a college degree and rise in the world with no high school diploma and eyes like piss holes in the snow, as everyone tells me.”

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

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

“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.”

“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 must congratulate myself, in passing, for never having lost the ability to examine my conscience, never having lost the gift of finding myself wanting & defective. Why fear the criticism of others when you, yourself, are first out of the critical gate? If self-denigration is the race I am the winner, even before the starting gun. Collect the bets.”

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

“Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.”

“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. Dad says they were too young to die for anything. Mam says it was disease and starvation and him never having a job. Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap and goes for a long walk”

“Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.”

“In the high school classroom you are a drill sergent, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.”

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

“I don't know what it means and I don't care because it's Shakespeare and it's like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words.”

“I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.”

“After a full belly all is poetry.”

“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. ”

“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.”

“...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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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”

“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.. . . nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.”

“He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

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

“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?”

“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.”

“Love her as in childhoodThrough feeble, old and grey.For you’ll never miss a mother’s loveTill she’s buried beneath the clay.”

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