Frank McCourt Zitate auf Englisch

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Ireland, once you live there, you're seduced by it.

Frank McCourt

I'm more interested in writing than in performing.

Frank McCourt

I think that's why you see so many Americans in Dublin look so sad: they are looking for the door through which they can begin to understand this place. I tell them, 'Go to the races.' I think it's the best place to start understanding the Irish.

Frank McCourt

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.

Frank McCourt

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?

Frank McCourt

If I had millions and millions and millions of dollars, I'd leave a large portion to the 42nd Street library. That's why - that was my hangout, the reading rooms, the North and South reading rooms. I'd go there, and my God, I couldn't believe I had access to all of these books. That was my university.

Frank McCourt

The main thing I am interested in is my experience as a teacher.

Frank McCourt

My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn.

Frank McCourt

Sure, I went through my 'J'accuse' phase. I was so angry for so long, I could hardly have a conversation without getting into an argument. And it was only when I felt I could finally distance myself from my past that I began to write about what happened - not just to me, but to lots of young people. I think my story is a cautionary tale.

Frank McCourt

I had no accomplishments except surviving. But that isn't enough in the community where I came from, because everybody was doing it. So I wasn't prepared for America, where everybody is glowing with good teeth and good clothes and food.

Frank McCourt

I would dream of going up to the 'New York Times' and asking them if I could please be a copy boy or let me scrub the toilets or something like that. But I couldn't rise to those heights.

Frank McCourt

I couldn't fit in the Irish community in New York. I was never one of the boys because they would talk about baseball or basketball, and I knew nothing about it.

Frank McCourt

Every life is a mystery. There is nobody whose life is normal and boring.

Frank McCourt

If you have a class of 35 children, and they're all smiling, and there's one little bastard, and he's just staring at you as if to say 'Show me', then he's the one you think about going home on the train.

Frank McCourt

Teachers have a million stories, but nobody consults them.

Frank McCourt

Just luxuriate in a certain memory, and the details will come. It's like a magnet attracting steel filings.

Frank McCourt

When I got out of the army, I had the G.I. Bill. Since I had no high school education or anything like that, I came to NYU, and they took a chance on me and let me in.

Frank McCourt

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

Frank McCourt

Way back in my mid-20s, I started making notes. I would just jot things down: lists of street names, songs, peculiar turns of speech, jokes, whatever.

Frank McCourt

I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.

Frank McCourt

We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.

Frank McCourt

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.

Frank McCourt

I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine.

Frank McCourt

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.

Frank McCourt