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

  62 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

  23 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.

  27 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

  14 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

  26 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

  4 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".

  16 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

  6 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)

  13 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

  8 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

  11 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

  8 Copy quote

• Keep scribbling! Something will happen.

  Frank McCourt

  Happens

  9 Copy quote

• You have to give yourself credit, not too much because that would be bragging.

  Frank McCourt

  Giving, Would Be, Credit

  Frank McCourt (2005). “Teacher Man: A Memoir”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

  3 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

  1 Copy quote

• After a full belly all is poetry.

  Frank McCourt

  Food, Eating, Belly

  13 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

  11 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

  10 Copy quote

• There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

  Frank McCourt

  Poverty, Absurd, Absurdity

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Kids, Two

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Tis: A Memoir”, p.183, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Use, Croquet, Doomed

  Frank McCourt (1999). “Angela's Ashes: A Memoir”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

  17 Copy quote

• I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.'

  Frank McCourt

  Dad, Son, Sickness

  7 Copy quote

• We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.

  Frank McCourt

  Christmas, Memories, Kind

  7 Copy quote

• 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. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died for Ireland or for the Faith. Dad says they were too young to die for anything. Mam says it was disease and starvation and him never having a job. Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap, and goes for a long walk.

  Frank McCourt

  Brother, Jobs, Dad

  "Sorry for Your Troubles" by Frank McCourt, www.newyorker.com. June 10, 1996.

  5 Copy quote

• The main thing I am interested in is my experience as a teacher.

  Frank McCourt

  Teacher

  4 Copy quote

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