Frank McCourt

“We were supposed to stay over in Boston, but when Scribners heard I'd won the Pulitzer, they told me to get on a plane - that Katie Couric wanted my body. And when Katie Couric wants your body, you get moving right away.”

“Some, like Mother Teresa, are born with a gene to help the poor, and some are born with a gene to write. I was born with a gene to tell my story, and I just had to.”

“I never really fit in anywhere.”

“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.”

“I had moments with my father that were exquisite - the stories he told me about Cuchulain, the mythological Irish warrior, are still magical to me.”

“I became a teacher all right. I wanted to become a teacher because I had a misconception about it. I didn't know that I'd be going into - when I first became a high school teacher in New York, that I'd be going into a battle zone, and no one prepared me for that.”

“I knew I had to find my own way of teaching.”

“If somebody wants me to speak in, say, Chicago, a limousine picks me up at the door to brings me to the airport. I fly at the front of the plane, and a limousine meets me at the other end to take me to a grand hotel, and usually an envelope is left for me with a per diem, maybe $150-a-day walking around money, and then I go home.”

“It gives me a very keen satisfaction that, after listening to my blather all those years, former students are now seeing that I wrote a book, that I did have it in me.”

“When I read about Joyce, I realised that there was no eight-till-one in his life: it was 24 hours a day for him.”

“St. Patrick, bringing the religion to Ireland, this is what we should celebrate.”

“I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.”

“I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.”

“I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so.”

“You look at passers-by in Rome and think, 'Do they know what they have here?' You can say the same about Philadelphia. Do people know what went on here?”

“I've had experiences on both sides of the ocean and various classrooms and bedrooms around New York.”

“You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my advanced age, when you're staring into the grave.”

“I couldn't even pick up the newspaper without saying, 'This is a fine piece of writing. I wish to hell I could write like this.'”

“I wanted to avoid all that literary stuff. I didn't want the self pity of 'The Portrait,' all the moaning and the whingeing. I'm not knocking Joyce: we all owe him a debt. He's the one who made so much possible.”

“I hated school in Ireland.”