Top 100 Mccourt Quotes
#1. We are condemned to repeat the past whether we remember it or not. It is inevitable; just ask Nietzsche (eternal return) or Hegel (history repeats itself) or James McCourt (history repeats itself like hiccups). Beirutis
Rabih Alameddine
#2. Clarke, define resplendent. I think it's shining, sir. Pithy, Clarke, but adequate. McCourt, give us a sentence with pithy. Clarke is pithy but adequate, sir. Adroit, McCourt. You have a mind for the priesthood, my boy, or politics. Think of that.
Frank McCourt
#3. I told [McCourt] the season is like a kaleidoscope. Every day it changes one degree and the picture is different.
Ned Colletti
#4. The death of a famous person is different from the death of a loved one, whether it is Michael Jackson, Frank McCourt, or Walter Cronkite. We didn't know any of them personally, and yet, we experience a sense of loss.
Madeleine M. Kunin
#5. It was a long time ago: 'Angela's Ashes' by Frank McCourt. It was a great story that was lasting, and I loved it so much. I also love Nora Ephron. I gobble up everything she writes. Also, I love Anthony Bourdain, very irreverent and funny.
Isabel Gillies
#6. Resentment is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die. - MALACHY MCCOURT
Katherine Crowley
#7. Fiorito has all the right stuff. His splendid memoir about his relationship with his dying father belongs on that small shelf with Philip Roth's Patrimony and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes.
Mordecai Richler
#8. He knows how it is to leave Ireland, did it himself and never got over it. You live in Los Angeles with sun and palm trees day in day out and you ask God if there's any chance He could give you one soft rainy Limerick day
Frank McCourt
#9. Nobody ever told them they had a right to an opinion.
Frank McCourt
#10. I was not a good father in my first marriage. Although there are ways of deserting the family without leaving physically, I was deserted in my head. I was always out, always in the saloons, always drinking, always messing about.
Malachy McCourt
#12. The sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice.
Frank McCourt
#13. The word is a sound of some sort and that's where the energy comes from.
Malachy McCourt
#14. With Angela drawn to the hangdog look and Malachy lonely after three months in jail, there was bound to be a knee-trmbler.
A knee-trmbler is the act itself done up against a wall, man and woman up on their toes, straining so hard their knees tremble with the excitement that's in it.
Frank McCourt
#15. In New York, with Prohibition in full swing, he thought he had died and gone o hell for his sins. Then he discovered speakeasies and he rejoiced.
Frank McCourt
#16. 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
#17. The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.
Frank McCourt
#18. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it's been a minute since my last confession.
Frank McCourt
#19. I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin
Frank McCourt
#20. I've seen so many horrible and awful results and consequences of people practicing alcoholism. It's murder, I've seen that. I've seen a lot of suicides, a lot of strange sins.
Malachy McCourt
#21. 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
#22. When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
Frank McCourt
#23. Imagination in the child is powerful. Reading and laughter and love are essential in our lives.
Malachy McCourt
#24. Once I know I'm an alcoholic then it is my obligation, duty to see what I can do about healing myself.
Malachy McCourt
#26. Never make any reference to the other person's family. "You're just like your - " because that is out, completely.
Malachy McCourt
#28. I tell my children, shut up and let me speak. What I've learned, I have been married for 45 years and in my own family It is that I've learned to stop being judgmental, to listen.
Malachy McCourt
#29. I stay in the present, so I don't know about the future.
Malachy McCourt
#30. Here am I, a human being and that has a body that is getting old. And I only have one, I can't trade it in.
Malachy McCourt
#31. We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.
Frank McCourt
#32. There seems to be less obvious corruption in city government and New York politicians, they aren't Republican or Democrat, they're New Yorkers.
Malachy McCourt
#33. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
Frank McCourt
#34. 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.
Frank McCourt
#35. He drinks his stout and laughs that there's nothing like a great bloody steak of a Friday night and if that's the worst sin he ever commits he'll float to heaven body and soul, ha ha ha.
Frank McCourt
#36. I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.
Frank McCourt
#37. This is the place for me where every single dream I ever had came to fruition and I love it dearly. I love ya, New York.
Malachy McCourt
#38. [ ... ] life can turn from being cheerful, warm and cozy to negative in a sec, and all it takes is us handing the power of happiness over to another human being.
Malachy McCourt
#39. Being a kid myself, I loved playing and I loved playing with words, and making up things and riddles and songs and not afraid of being silly in public.
Malachy McCourt
#40. Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks' Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely.
Frank McCourt
#41. I say, Billy, what's the use in playing croquet when you're doomed?
He says, Frankie, what's the use of not playing croquet when you're doomed?
Frank McCourt
#42. I admire certain priests and nuns who go off on their own and do God's work on their own, who help in the ghettos, but as far as the institution of the church is concerned, I think it is despicable.
Frank McCourt
#43. 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
#44. When I'm writing, I thoroughly enjoy it. It just goes on.
Malachy McCourt
#45. To me a saint is a severely edited sinner. That's what I think.
Malachy McCourt
#46. Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the rain.
Frank McCourt
#47. I'm in New York, land of the free and home of the brave, but I'm supposed to behave as if I were in Limerick at all times.
Frank McCourt
#50. We are spectators to violence, and therefore are, how well we don't know and make sure we don't know the difference of real violence to that of simulation.
Malachy McCourt
#51. It's lovely to know that the world can't interfere with the inside of your head.
Frank McCourt
#52. I failed everything in school. I left when I was 13 because I had no comprehension of what the hell they were talking about up there at the blackboard. I must have that ADD thing. But, listening to people I thought, that's wonderful to be able to tell a story.
Malachy McCourt
#54. My purpose in life always has been to avoid work. And I hear these people saying, "I work hard and I pay my taxes." Well, you're an asshole.
Malachy McCourt
#55. 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
#56. The alcoholism got me and I ruined my first marriage with drinking and the lying and the deceit and infidelity, and all of that. The whole bloody thing.
Malachy McCourt
#57. Mikey's father, champion of all pint drinkers, is like my uncle Pa Keating, he doesn't give a fiddler's fart what the world says and that's the way I'd like to be myself.
Frank McCourt
#58. I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.
Frank McCourt
#59. I would never become an alcoholic like my father because my father deserted us. But diseases, there's no let up.
Malachy McCourt
#60. Corporations can deduct their planes, all their office expenses, their machinery, their computers and Teleprompters and whatever else they have. They can deduct their yachts, they can deduct their limousines, their planes, everything.
Malachy McCourt
#62. I know that big people don't like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How's school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.
Frank McCourt
#63. I've been sober for 25. And every day I am very grateful that I don't drink.
Malachy McCourt
#64. That IS what journal writing is all about - showing ourselves to God.
Frank McCourt
#65. When I'm writing in long hand, it just goes on and on and on. When I was in the saloon business, I would just greet people and talk to them and avoid taxes, and getting behind the bar. What else.
Malachy McCourt
#66. Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world
Frank McCourt
#67. Andy says, I don't understand how they can give loans to people who want to spend two weeks lying on the sand at the goddam Jersey shore and then turn down a woman with three kids hanging on by her fingernails.
Frank McCourt
#69. They said her duck recipe and the Chinese music were so dramatic everything else sounded anemic.
Frank McCourt
#70. I can't go too much into my domestic life because there are ex-wives ready to do me in.
Frank McCourt
#71. I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.
Frank McCourt
#72. I see the way I look upon organized religion, I was a victim of that of mythology, and of cruelty, and all the absurd stuff.
Malachy McCourt
#73. Look, lust, and leave, knowing I could never have one of them for myself.
Malachy McCourt
#74. Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.
Frank McCourt
#75. This is the situation in the public schools of America: The farther you travel from the classroom the greater your financial and professional rewards.
Frank McCourt
#76. There's potential for it being soon. The reality is that there are only 'X' positions available, so it's a matter of luck or timing. They are people positions, and Kim is incredibly qualified.
Jamie McCourt
#77. Rhea shot up from her pillow, arms extended in front of her, and screamed. Pillows and stuffed animals launched off her bed as if they feared for their lives. In a matter of seconds it was over.
C.L. McCourt
#78. 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
#79. I've avoided work all my life, you see. So, I'm like a bee. I go from flower to flower.
Malachy McCourt
#80. 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
#81. I am an alcoholic, as I said. And it is however we call it, a disease. That's an explanation, but not an excuse.
Malachy McCourt
#82. I absolutely love the public transportation system in New York. No matter what, no matter how people complain, it is the best in the world.
Malachy McCourt
#83. There's no recovery from alcoholism, it is an incurable disease. And it also is a disease that tells you, you don't have a disease.
Malachy McCourt
#84. Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won't let them because there's nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking. Same thing with kids. Keep 'em busy or they might start thinking.
Frank McCourt
#85. My childhood here ... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn.
Frank McCourt
#86. For once, mam, my bladder isn't near my eye and why isn't it?
Frank McCourt
#87. I am full of theories that are based on a very liquid foundation, because I used to be a drinker.
Malachy McCourt
#88. If you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you're pissing on the present.
Malachy McCourt
#89. Organized religions have all the facets of organized crime, except the compassion of organized crime.
Malachy McCourt
#90. Planning does not slow the process, it ensures the process can be executed in the first place.
Cynthia McCourt
#91. Don't be afraid to reinvent yourself. I have done it before and am doing it again. It makes life interesting.
C.L. McCourt
#92. There are boys here who have to mend their shoes whatever way they can. There are boys in this class with no shoes at all. It's not their fault and it's no shame. Our Lord had no shoes. He died shoeless. Do you see Him hanging on the cross sporting shoes? Do you, boys?
Frank McCourt
#93. Samuel Beckett was saying, in a new biography, that he could remember being in the womb, which, of course, is a bit far-fetched. But he's an Irishman, so nothing's too far-fetched.
Frank McCourt
#94. Limericks don't come from Limerick. But it comes from that between the verses when they used to have those competitions that they would put in the refrain, "follow me up, follow me up, follow me up to Limerick Town."
Malachy McCourt
#95. The future has to do with fear. Don't attempt to come up here. Don't attempt to go forward, you were nobody, you are nobody, and you'll always be nothing, so don't even think about coming here because if you do, something awful will happen to you.
Malachy McCourt
#96. I am for who i was in the beginning but now is present and i exist in the future.
Frank McCourt
#97. Conservatism is not a political ideology, it is a severe form of brain damage for which there's hardly any cure.
Malachy McCourt
#98. It's one day at a time, that's all there is to it, and so I don't have to worry about it. All I do is, okay, I do not have to drink. And if I feel like it, I postpone it for ten minutes, and that way I find something else to do in the meantime.
Malachy McCourt
#99. When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.
Frank McCourt
#100. You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my advanced age, when you're staring into the grave.
Frank McCourt
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