“There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.”

“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 in this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?”

“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.”

“But I don't know how I'll ever get a college degree and rise in the world with no high school diploma and eyes like piss holes in the snow, as everyone tells me.”

“You can't teach in a vacuum. A good teacher relates the material to real life. You understand that, don't you?”

“A job is death without dignity.”

“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.”

“Saturday night when you have a few shillings in your pocket is the most delicious night of the week.”

“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.”

“I am teaching. Storytelling is teaching.”

“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.”

“Nobody ever told them they had a right to an opinion.”

“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.”

“The boys from Staten Island would fill more body bags than Stuyvesant could ever imagine. Mechanics and plumbers had to fight while college students shook indignant fists, fornicated in the fields of Woodstock and sat in.”

“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.”

“That’s a name for gangsters and politicians.”

“To enter a room is to move from one environment to another and that, for the teenager, can be traumatic. There be dragons, daily horrors from acne to zit.”

“There's something hostile about the way they enter and leave the room that tells you what they think of you. It could be your imagination and you try to figure out what will bring them over to your side. You try lessons that worked with other classes but even that doesn't help and it's because of that chemistry. They know when they have you on the run. They have instincts that detect your frustrations.”

“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.”

“They said her duck recipe and the Chinese music were so dramatic everything else sounded anemic.”

“That IS what journal writing is all about—showing ourselves to God.”

“What are they, Dad? Cows, son. What are cows, Dad? Cows are cows, son.”

“I was sick of my miserable childhood, too, the way it followed me across the Atlantic and kept nagging at me to be made public.”

“There's nothing worse in the world than to owe and be beholden to anyone.”

“This is the situation in the public schools of America: The farther you travel from the classroom the greater your financial and professional rewards.”

“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. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. [...] Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish (...) it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

“The bus stops at the O’Connell Monument and Uncle Pat goes to the Monument Fish and Chip Café where the smells are so delicious my stomach beats with the hunger. He gets a shilling’s worth of fish and chips and my mouth is watering”

“There are bars of Pear's soap and a thick book called Pear's Encyclopedia, which keeps me up day and night because it tells you everything about everything and that's all I want to know.”

“If you have anything to say, shut up!”

“Stock your minds and you can move through the world resplendent.”

“When the dark clouds flutter like bats in my head I wish I could open a window and release them.”

“For once, mam, my bladder isn't near my eye and why isn't it?”

“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.”

“Ooh, aren’t we getting solemn, and where did I leave my soapbox? Look”

“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”

“There's no use asking more questions. If you ask a question they tell you it's a mystery, you'll understand when you grow up, be a good boy, ask your mother, ask your father, for the love o' Jesus leave me alone, go out and play.”

“In all my years at Stuyvesant only one parent, a mother, asked if her son was enjoying school. I said yes. He seemed to be enjoying himself. She smiled, stood up, said, Thank you, and left. One parent in all those years.”

“I don't give a fiddler's fart!”

“When I asked her about her days in Brooklyn she doled out scraps and then went silent. What was the use? The past is the past and it’s dangerous to go back.”

“Through journal writing, you’ll discover how to get more benefit from everything that you’ve experienced. In the process, you’ll discover that what you’ve learned from being a survivor has enriched your life beyond anything you’ve ever imagined.”

“For many writers, the journal is their opportunity to be honest with them- selves—the greatest test of all.”

“Also, said Freddie, I work nights to make a living and pay my way through college. You know what that’s like, Mr. McCourt. I don’t see what that has to do with your writing. Also, it’s not easy when you’re black in this society. Oh, Christ, Freddie. It’s not easy being anything in this society. All right. You want an A? You’ll get it. I don’t want to be accused of bigotry. No, I don’t want it just because you’re pissed off or because I’m black. I want it because I deserve it. I”

“It's lovely to know the world can't interfere with the inside of your head.”

“There's no use asking more questions. If you ask a question they tell you it's a mystery, you'll understand when you grow up, be a good boy, ask your mother, ask your father, for the love o' Jesus leave me alone, go out and play.”

“I want to tell them I won't be able to die for the Faith because I'm already booked to die for Ireland.”

“You are never to let anybody slam the door in your face again.”

“If everyone moved on and up and out who would teach the children?”

“Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it... you might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”