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. – Frank McCourt
We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely. – Frank McCourt
We were below welfare. We begged from people on welfare. My father tried to repair our shoes with pieces of bicycle tires. – Frank McCourt
Kids all want to look cool, as if knowledge is a great burden, but they’re always looking around. They remember. – Frank McCourt
I was a houseman, the lowest. I was just above – in the hierarchy of jobs, I was just above the Puerto Rican dishwashers – just above, so I felt superior to them. – Frank McCourt
Certain citizens claimed I had disgraced the fair name of the city of Limerick, that I had attacked the church, that I had despoiled my mother’s name, and that if I returned to Limerick, I would surely be found hanging from a lamppost. – Frank McCourt
It’s like a series of waves hitting you. First, getting excerpted in the ‘New Yorker’ last summer, then getting published, then the best-seller list, the award, the movie deal, now this, a Pulitzer. – Frank McCourt
The part of Limerick we lived in is Georgian, you know, those Georgian houses. You see them in pictures of Dublin. – Frank McCourt
First of all there is always that artistic challenge of creating something. Or the particular experience to take slum life in that period and make something out of it in the form of a book. And then I felt some kind of responsibility to my family. – Frank McCourt
We were supposed to stay over in Boston, but when Scribners heard I’d won the Pulitzer, they told me to get on a plane – that Katie Couric wanted my body. And when Katie Couric wants your body, you get moving right away. – Frank McCourt
I didn’t have to struggle at all to get an agent and a publisher. Everything fell into my lap. – Frank McCourt
For some reason, I had a responsibility to my family and the people who lived around me. I felt that I had to convey their dignity – the way they dealt with adversity and poverty – and their good humor. – Frank McCourt
They tell me I’m on ‘Politically Incorrect’ with Ollie North. That should be a lot of fun. – Frank McCourt
People who think I have insulted Ireland or Limerick or my family have not read the book! – Frank McCourt
There’s nothing in the world like getting up in front of a high-school classroom in New York City. They won’t give you a break if you don’t hold them. There’s no escape. – Frank McCourt
You sail into the harbor, and Staten Island is on your left, and then you see the Statue of Liberty. This is what everyone in the world has dreams of when they think about New York. And I thought, ‘My God, I’m in Heaven. I’ll be dancing down Fifth Avenue like Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers.’ – Frank McCourt
I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine. – Frank McCourt
I never expected to write a book about a slum in Ireland that was going to catapult me, as they say, into some kind of – onto the best seller list. – Frank McCourt
I think there’s something about the Irish experience – that we had to have a sense of humor or die. – Frank McCourt
Early in my teaching days, the kids asked me the meaning of a poem. I replied, ‘I don’t know any more than you do. I have ideas. What are your ideas?’ I realized then that we’re all in the same boat. What does anybody know? – Frank McCourt
I just wrote the book and was amazed and astounded that it became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. It still hasn’t sunk in. – Frank McCourt
We don’t look at teachers as scholars the way they do in Europe. In Spain you’re called a professor if you’re a high school teacher, and they pay teachers – they pay teachers in Europe. – Frank McCourt