Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt
Francis "Frank" McCourtwas an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, Angela's Ashes, a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth14 August 1953
CountryIreland
mean giving parent
If you were mean to your parents, they'd give you a good belt in the gob and send you flying across the room.
mother children father
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.
art miracle atmosphere
There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me.
father lasts moonstruck
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it's been a minute since my last confession.
dream american-dream fantasy
I am not living the American Dream; I am living the American fantasy.
wonder enough hyphens
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
tough knows
When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.
sex opposites dancing
And, of course, they've always condemned dancing. You know, you might touch a member of the opposite sex. And you might get excited and you might do something natural.
house mind world
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.
long childhood fatherhood
My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn.
sweet eggs heaven
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?
mother bullying father
People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all -- we were wet.
country war dark
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.
teacher world
There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.