272 Quotes by Frank McCourt

Everything in my head was secondhand, too: Catholicism; Ireland’s sad history, a litany of suffering and martyrdom drummed into me by priests, schoolmasters and parents who knew no better.

For once, mam, my bladder isn’t near my eye and why isn’t it?

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.

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 in this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?

Everyone has a story to tell. All you have to do is write it. But it's not that easy.

My father and mother should have stayed in New York, where they met and married and where I was born.

I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine.

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?

I don't see myself as either Irish or American, I'm a New Yorker.