A biography for Frank McCourthasn’t been written yet.
“I was a houseman, the lowest. I was just above - in the hierarchy of jobs, I was just above the Puerto Rican dishwashers - just above, so I felt superior to them.”
“I was ashamed of it, of the poverty I came from.”
“Even when I went to the Lion's Head in the Village, where all you journalists would hang out, I was always peripheral. I was never really part of anything except the classroom. That's where I belonged.”
“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.”
“I know that big people don't like questions from children. They can ask all the questions they like, How's school? Are you a good boy? Did you say your prayers? but if you ask them did they say their prayers you might be hit on the head.”
“A funeral was a great form of entertainment. A wake was a great form of entertainment.”
“Kids all want to look cool, as if knowledge is a great burden, but they're always looking around. They remember.”
“Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.”
“I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.”
“I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine.”
“Just luxuriate in a certain memory, and the details will come. It's like a magnet attracting steel filings.”
“People want real-life stories.”
“Early in my teaching days, the kids asked me the meaning of a poem. I replied, 'I don't know any more than you do. I have ideas. What are your ideas?' I realized then that we're all in the same boat. What does anybody know?”
“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.”
“If ever you are to be visited by the Holy Ghost, you should make certain you're sitting beside a fireman.”
“I didn't have to struggle at all to get an agent and a publisher. Everything fell into my lap.”
“The main thing I am interested in is my experience as a teacher.”
“When I was a kid, I was a pretty good runner, and there was nothing like winning a race.”
“I never expected to write a book about a slum in Ireland that was going to catapult me, as they say, into some kind of - onto the best seller list.”
“My sister died in Brooklyn.”