Frank McCourt

My sister died in Brooklyn.

— Frank McCourt

“I don't give a fiddler's fart!”

— Frank McCourt

Scatter my ashes on the Shannon.

— Frank McCourt

Keep scribbling! Something will happen.

— Frank McCourt

Education is an art.

— Frank McCourt

After a full belly all is poetry.

— Frank McCourt

I don't know anything about a stock!

— Frank McCourt

I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching

— Frank McCourt

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

— Frank McCourt

The English wouldn't give you the steam of their piss.

— Frank McCourt

I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so.

— Frank McCourt

Every life is a mystery. There is nobody whose life is normal and boring.

— Frank McCourt

I knew I had to find my own way of teaching.

— Frank McCourt

The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.

— Frank McCourt

“Rest your eyes and then read till they fall out of your head.”

— Frank McCourt

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

— Frank McCourt

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…

— Frank McCourt

“I'm in New York, land of the free and home of the brave, but I'm supposed to behave as if I were…

— Frank McCourt

If ever you are to be visited by the Holy Ghost, you should make certain you're sitting beside a fireman.

— Frank McCourt

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

— Frank McCourt

You look at passers-by in Rome and think, 'Do they know what they have here?' You can say the same about Philadelphia.…

— Frank McCourt

“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…

— Frank McCourt

You don't have to go fight bulls in Spain like Hemingway to write something great, or go off to war. It's right…

— Frank McCourt

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

— Frank McCourt

I appealed to my mother. I told her it wasn't fair the way the whole family was invading my dreams and she…

— Frank McCourt

There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it.…

— Frank McCourt

Oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is…

— Frank McCourt

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the…

— Frank McCourt

I know that big people don't like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How's school? Are you…

— Frank McCourt

“But I don't know how I'll ever get a college degree and rise in the world with no high school diploma and…

— Frank McCourt

I became a teacher all right. I wanted to become a teacher because I had a misconception about it. I didn't know…

— Frank McCourt

The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for…

— Frank McCourt

“You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It…

— Frank McCourt

You never know when you might come home and find Mam sitting by the fire chatting with a woman and a child,…

— Frank McCourt

He sits in an old armchair in the corner covered with bits of blankets and a bucket behind the chair that stinks…

— Frank McCourt

In the high school classroom you are a drill sergent, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a…

— Frank McCourt

“When she's not talking to him the house is heavy and cold and we know we're not supposed to talk to him…

— Frank McCourt

The master says it's a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it's a glorious thing to die for…

— Frank McCourt

He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else…

— Frank McCourt

Before the famine, which was in the 1840s, that was an emotional turning point... There are various documents showing how the Elizabethan…

— Frank McCourt