Top 100 Mccourt's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.
Frank McCourt
#9. I can't go too much into my domestic life because there are ex-wives ready to do me in.
Frank McCourt
#10. They said her duck recipe and the Chinese music were so dramatic everything else sounded anemic.
Frank McCourt
#12. 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
#13. Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world
Frank McCourt
#14. 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
#15. That IS what journal writing is all about - showing ourselves to God.
Frank McCourt
#16. I've been sober for 25. And every day I am very grateful that I don't drink.
Malachy McCourt
#17. 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
#19. 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
#20. I would never become an alcoholic like my father because my father deserted us. But diseases, there's no let up.
Malachy McCourt
#21. I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.
Frank McCourt
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#27. I don't know what it means and I don't care because it's Shakespeare and it's like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words.
Frank McCourt
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. Live every day as if it's going to be your last, and one day, you'll be right.
Malachy McCourt
#31. Everything in my head was secondhand, too: Catholicism; Ireland's sad history, a litany of suffering and martyrdom drummed into me by priests, schoolmasters and parents who knew no better.
Frank McCourt
#32. That's one part of oppression is to make sure you are a shameful, shamed human being. That takes care of the past.
Malachy McCourt
#33. The Supreme Court gives corporations the same rights as a human being. It's absurd. You can't do that.
Malachy McCourt
#34. There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.
Frank McCourt
#36. 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
#37. If ever you're getting a dog, Francis, make sure it's a Buddhist. Good-natured dogs, the Buddhists. Never, never get a Mahommedan. They'll eat you sleeping. Never a Catholic dog. They'll eat you every day including Fridays.
Frank McCourt
#38. Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve.
Frank McCourt
#39. I think people are so disillusioned with the parties. It's one party with two different names, and they are so spineless.
Malachy McCourt
#40. 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
#41. If you look up the word "gab" in the dictionary, it's insignificant of importance, of no substance. That's what gab is.
Malachy McCourt
#42. 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
#43. The purpose of the media is to make us all spectators, to watch. So that's why we have millions of fat children watching the games, eating and consuming and not playing themselves.
Malachy McCourt
#44. 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
#45. That's what he disliked about certain artists and writers. They interfered and pointed to everything as if you couldn't see it or read for yourself.
Frank McCourt
#46. There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.
Frank McCourt
#47. Do whatever you want because that's not what you are. That's what you do for the moment.
Malachy McCourt
#49. 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
#50. Conservatism is not a political ideology, it is a severe form of brain damage for which there's hardly any cure.
Malachy McCourt
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. I stay in the present, so I don't know about the future.
Malachy McCourt
#54. 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
#56. Never make any reference to the other person's family. "You're just like your - " because that is out, completely.
Malachy McCourt
#58. Once I know I'm an alcoholic then it is my obligation, duty to see what I can do about healing myself.
Malachy McCourt
#59. Imagination in the child is powerful. Reading and laughter and love are essential in our lives.
Malachy McCourt
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin
Frank McCourt
#64. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it's been a minute since my last confession.
Frank McCourt
#65. 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
#66. The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.
Frank McCourt
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. The word is a sound of some sort and that's where the energy comes from.
Malachy McCourt
#72. The sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice.
Frank McCourt
#74. 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
#75. Nobody ever told them they had a right to an opinion.
Frank McCourt
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#83. 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
#84. Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the rain.
Frank McCourt
#85. To me a saint is a severely edited sinner. That's what I think.
Malachy McCourt
#86. When I'm writing, I thoroughly enjoy it. It just goes on.
Malachy McCourt
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. It's lovely to know that the world can't interfere with the inside of your head.
Frank McCourt
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. [ ... ] 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
#93. 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
#94. I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.
Frank McCourt
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
Frank McCourt
#98. I told [McCourt] the season is like a kaleidoscope. Every day it changes one degree and the picture is different.
Ned Colletti
#99. 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
#100. We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.
Frank McCourt
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