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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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Frank McCourt
Age: 78 †
Born: 1930
Born: August 19
Died: 2009
Died: July 19
Autobiographer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Francis McCourt
Teenager
Handle
Ignorance
American
Think
Thinking
Teenagers
Nerve
Nerves
More quotes by Frank McCourt
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
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
Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him.
Frank McCourt
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
Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world
Frank McCourt
There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.
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 Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.
Frank McCourt
Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.
Frank McCourt
Keep scribbling! Something will happen.
Frank McCourt
It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.
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
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
There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me.
Frank McCourt
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
Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.
Frank McCourt
I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.'
Frank McCourt
The English wouldn't give you the steam of their piss.
Frank McCourt
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
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it's been a minute since my last confession.
Frank McCourt
I don't believe in happiness anyway... it's too much of an American pastime, this search for happiness. Just forget happiness and enjoy your misery.
Frank McCourt
