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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

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Frank McCourt
Age: 78 †
Born: 1930
Born: August 19
Died: 2009
Died: July 19
Autobiographer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Francis McCourt
Someone
Irish
Enough
German
Something
Invented
Always
Hadn
Along
Wonder
American
Hyphen
Else
Hyphens

More quotes by Frank McCourt

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I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.'
Frank McCourt
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Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world
Frank McCourt
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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.
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Your mind is a treasure house that you should stock well and it's the one part of you the world can't interfere with.
Frank McCourt
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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
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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.
Frank McCourt
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Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve.
Frank McCourt
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The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.
Frank McCourt
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I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching
Frank McCourt
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I'm not one of those James Joyce intellectuals who can stand back and look at the whole edifice... It was a slow process for me to just crawl out of it, like a snake leaving his skin behind.
Frank McCourt
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Oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea?
Frank McCourt
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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 -- Angela's Ashes.
Frank McCourt
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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.
Frank McCourt
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I had no accomplishments except surviving. But that isn't enough in the community where I came from, because everybody was doing it. So I wasn't prepared for America, where everybody is glowing with good teeth and good clothes and food.
Frank McCourt
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The English wouldn't give you the steam of their piss.
Frank McCourt
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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
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I'm more interested in writing than in performing.
Frank McCourt
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My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn.
Frank McCourt
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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.
Frank McCourt
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They can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they'd be lost forever.
Frank McCourt