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There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.

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
Sillier
Telling
Already
Teacher
Nothing
World

More quotes by 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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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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It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.
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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The main thing I am interested in is my experience as a teacher.
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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If you were mean to your parents, they'd give you a good belt in the gob and send you flying across the room.
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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The English wouldn't give you the steam of their piss.
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
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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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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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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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When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.
Frank McCourt
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I'm more interested in writing than in performing.
Frank McCourt
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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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I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching
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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Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world
Frank McCourt
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Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him.
Frank McCourt