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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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Frank McCourt
Age: 78 †
Born: 1930
Born: August 19
Died: 2009
Died: July 19
Autobiographer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Francis McCourt
Held
Kept
Institutions
Hell
Church
Idea
Afterlife
Ideas
Institution
Nothing
Contempt

More quotes by Frank McCourt

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The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.
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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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
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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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I told her tea bags were just a convenience for people with busy lives and she said 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 into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?
Frank McCourt
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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
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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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Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world
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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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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I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching
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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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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Keep scribbling! Something will happen.
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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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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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
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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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It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.
Frank McCourt