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
kissing emotional mouths
Before the famine, which was in the 1840s, that was an emotional turning point... There are various documents showing how the Elizabethan English, in particular, were shocked by Irish displays of affection, by the way women acted toward strangers, walking up and putting their arms around them and kissing them right full on the mouth.
past going-away i-can
I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family...
business mistake bars
They all went into the bar business. Which was a mistake, because they began to sip at the merchandise and it set them back, set us all back. Well, them more than I.
poverty absurd absurdity
There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.
teacher
The main thing I am interested in is my experience as a teacher.
memories writing past
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.
teenager ignorance thinking
Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve.
workout sky-is-the-limit experience
The sky is the limit. You never have the same experience twice.
nice people tea
I told her tea bags were just a convenience for people with busy lives and she said no one is so busy they can't take time to make a decent cup of tea and if you are that busy you don't deserve a decent cup of tea for what is it all about anyway? Are we put into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?
giving credit too-much
You have to give yourself credit, not too much because that would be bragging.
childhood catholic ordinary
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.
children heart mean
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.
wisdom shoes empty-mind
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.
I am for who i was in the beginning but now is present and i exist in the future.