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Frank McCourt Quotes

Francis McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Angela's Ashes, a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood. Wikipedia  

✵ 19. August 1930 – 19. July 2009  •  Other names فرانک مک‌کورت, Ֆրանք Մքոթ
Frank McCourt photo

Works

Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt
Teacher Man
Teacher Man
Frank McCourt
'Tis
'Tis
Frank McCourt
Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt
Teacher Man
Teacher Man
Frank McCourt
'Tis
'Tis
Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt: 38 quotes2 likes

Famous Frank McCourt Quotes

“After a full belly all is poetry.”

Frank McCourt

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

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes (1996)
Context: 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.

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes (1996)

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes

“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”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

§14
'Tis (2000)
Source: ' Tis: a Memoir
Context: Why is it the minute I open my mouth the whole world is telling me they're Irish and we should all have a drink? 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.

Frank McCourt Quotes about the world

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Source: Teacher Man

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

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes (1996)

“Remember, if this is your world, you're one of them, a teenager. You live in two worlds. You're with them, day in, day out, and you'll never know, Mac, what that does to your mind. Teenager forever. June will come and it’s bye-bye teacher, nice knowin' you, my sister's gonna be in your class in September. But there’s something else, Mac. In any classroom, something is always happening. They keep you on your toes. They keep your fresh. You'll never grow old, but the danger is you might have the mind of an adolescent forever. That's a real problem, Mac. You get used to talking to those kids on their level. Then when you go to a bar for a beer you forgot how to talk to your friends and they look at you. They look at your like you just arrived from another planet and they're right.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

“… 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.”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

'Tis (2000)

Frank McCourt Quotes

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

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes (1996)

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes (1996)

“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 book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes

“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?”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes (1996)

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

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes

“Why can't this priest go back to Los Angeles and leave me alone? Why is he taking me to lunch when he should be out there visiting the sick and the dying? That's what priests are for.”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

§10
'Tis (2000)

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

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes (1996)

“I hoped I might become a debonair, hard-drinking, poetic Irishman like him. I'd be a New York character. I'd set the table on a roar and dominate the bars of Greenwich Village with song and story. At the Lion’s Head Bar I drank whiskey after whiskey to give myself the courage to be colorful. Bartenders suggested I slow down. Friends said they didn't understand a word coming out of my mouth. They lifted me out of the bar and into a taxi, paid the driver and told him to drive nonstop till I reached my door.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

“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.”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

'Tis (2000)

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes (1996)

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

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

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

'Tis (2000)

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

“No, young man. No jokes here. There's a time and place. When you say something in class they take you seriously. You're the teacher. You say you went out with a sheep and they’re going to swallow every word. They don’t know the mating habits of the Irish.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

“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?”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

§48
'Tis (2000)

“I'd like to stand up in those classes and announce to the world that I'm too busy to be Irish or Catholic or anything else, that I'm working day and night to make a living, trying to read books for my courses and falling asleep in the library […].”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

§29
'Tis (2000)

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

“If you don't settle down to something very soon you’ll be forty and wondering where your life went. She pointed to the people all around us, happily married, productive, settled, content, having children, developing mature relationships, looking to the future, going on nice vacations, joining clubs, taking up golf, growing old together, visiting relatives, dreaming of grandchildren, supporting their churches, thinking of retirement. I agreed with her but I couldn't admit it. I gave her a sermon on life and America. I told her life was an adventure, and maybe I was living in the wrong century.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

“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 book 'Tis

§23
'Tis (2000)

“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.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

“I like the lemon meringue pie but I don't like the way Americans leave out the 'r' at the end of a word.”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

§2
'Tis (2000)

“I ate the sandwich.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

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