Quote

They all went into the bar business. Which was a mistake, because they began to sip at the merchandise and it set them back, set us all back. Well, them more than I.

Frank McCourt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Frank McCourt
Age: 78 †
Born: 1930
Born: August 19
Died: 2009
Died: July 19
Autobiographer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Francis McCourt
Back
Wells
Well
Merchandise
Bars
Began
Mistake
Went
Business

More quotes by Frank McCourt

Image
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
Image
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
Image
I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching
Frank McCourt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There’s no use saying anything in the schoolyard because there’s always someone with an answer and there’s nothing you can do but punch them in the nose and if you were to punch everyone who has an answer you’d be punching morning noon and night.
Frank McCourt
Image
The sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice.
Frank McCourt
Image
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
Image
The English wouldn't give you the steam of their piss.
Frank McCourt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Keep scribbling! Something will happen.
Frank McCourt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve.
Frank McCourt
Image
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
Image
When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.
Frank McCourt
Image
Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.
Frank McCourt
Image
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