Frank McCourt Quotes

Quotes about:

• You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.

  Frank McCourt

  Inspirational, Optimistic, Shoes

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

  69 Copy quote

• Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.

  Frank McCourt

  Dance, Song, Tales

  Frank McCourt (2005). “Teacher Man: A Memoir”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

  27 Copy quote

• Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.

  Frank McCourt

  Empty Mind, House, Ashes

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

  32 Copy quote

• I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.

  Frank McCourt

  Significance, My Own, Insignificant

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

  20 Copy quote

• It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.

  Frank McCourt

  Beautiful, Lovely, World

  "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir". Book by Frank McCourt, 1996.

  32 Copy quote

• In the high school classroom you are a drill sergent, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.

  Frank McCourt

  Mother, Brother, Uncles

  Frank McCourt (2005). “Teacher Man: A Memoir”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Happiness, Believe, Too Much

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Childhood, Catholic, Ordinary

  Angela's Ashes: A Memoir ch. 1 (1996)

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Wisdom, Shoes, Empty Mind

  "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir".

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  House, Mind, World

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Tis: A Memoir”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Mother, Blessing, Love Is

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.357, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Afterlife, Church

  11 Copy quote

• After a full belly all is poetry.

  Frank McCourt

  Food, Eating, Belly

  18 Copy quote

• I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching

  Frank McCourt

  Teaching, Storytelling

  Frank McCourt (2005). “Teacher Man: A Memoir”, p.26, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him.

  Frank McCourt

  Potatoes, Enough, Mashed Potatoes

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.274, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Memories, Writing, Past

  6 Copy quote

• Keep scribbling! Something will happen.

  Frank McCourt

  Happens

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Snow, Forever, Teeth

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Tis: A Memoir”, p.59, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Snakes, Leaving, Skins

  8 Copy quote

• I must congratulate myself, in passing, for never having lost the ability to examine my conscience, never having lost the gift of finding myself wanting & defective. Why fear the criticism of others when you, yourself, are first out of the critical gate? If self-denigration is the race I am the winner, even before the starting gun. Collect the bets.

  Frank McCourt

  Gun, Race, Self

  Frank McCourt (2005). “Teacher Man: A Memoir”, p.318, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• You never know when you might come home and find Mam sitting by the fire chatting with a woman and a child, strangers. Always a woman and child. Mam finds them wandering the streets and if they ask, Could you spare a few pennies, miss? her heart breaks. She never has money so she invites them home for tea and a bit of fried bread and if it's a bad night she'll let them sleep by the fire on a pile of rags in the corner. The bread she gives them always means less for us and if we complain she says there are always people worse off and we can surely spare a little from what we have.

  Frank McCourt

  Children, Home, Heart

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.273, Simon and Schuster

  17 Copy quote

• Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.

  Frank McCourt

  Happiness, Happy, Glowing

  9 Copy quote

• The sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice.

  Frank McCourt

  Workout, Sky, Experience

  15 Copy quote

• I don't absolve my father completely of his responsibility for what he did to us I feel compassion, maybe. He had his demons. But I still can't understand how a man can walk away from children. And leave them to starve, as we nearly did, if it wasn't for my mother going out and begging.

  Frank McCourt

  Mother, Children, Father

  15 Copy quote

• He sits in an old armchair in the corner covered with bits of blankets and a bucket behind the chair that stinks enough to make you sick and when you look at that old man in the dark corner you want to get a hose with hot water and strip him and wash him down and give him a big feed of rashers and eggs and mashed potatoes with loads of butter and salt and onions.I want to take the man from the Boer War and the pile of rags in the bed and put them in a big sunny house in the country with birds chirping away outside the window and a stream gurgling.

  Frank McCourt

  Country, War, Dark

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.317, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

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