* " 'You had that miserable childhood, so you have something to write about. What are we gonna write about? All we do is get born, go to school, go on vacation, go to college, fall in love or something, graduate and go into some kind of profession, get married, have the 2.3 kids you're always talking about, send the kids to school, get divorced like 50 percent of the population, get fat, get the first heart attack, retire, die.' "
" 'Jonathan,' " McCourt replied, " 'that is the most miserable scenario of American life I've heard in a high school classroom. But you've supplied the ingredients for the great American novel. You've encapsulated the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald.' "
*“There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me.”
* “The poverty and the influence of the church were very damaging. It damaged all of us emotionally. To be poor deprives you of self-esteem.”
* “Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.”
* “I was tormented. Fear and trembling. And a sense of doom. A literal belief in hell. Hell for eternity. With devils chasing you for eternity with pitchforks. I trembled. I couldn't go to sleep for fear I might die and wake up in hell. I was in agony.”
*“When I first came to New York and saw Italian families and their displays of affection, I was taken aback a bit because it was uninhibited.”
*“We were just slogging on from day to day and making the best of it. But with a light at the end of the tunnel... AMERICA!”
*“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.”
* “All those smells... and the kids, we were the great unwashed... nobody ever knew what a shower was... We washed maybe from eyebrow to chin, week after week after week. Our crotches were innocent of water.”
*“We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.”
" 'Jonathan,' " McCourt replied, " 'that is the most miserable scenario of American life I've heard in a high school classroom. But you've supplied the ingredients for the great American novel. You've encapsulated the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald.' "
*“There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me.”
* “The poverty and the influence of the church were very damaging. It damaged all of us emotionally. To be poor deprives you of self-esteem.”
* “Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.”
* “I was tormented. Fear and trembling. And a sense of doom. A literal belief in hell. Hell for eternity. With devils chasing you for eternity with pitchforks. I trembled. I couldn't go to sleep for fear I might die and wake up in hell. I was in agony.”
*“When I first came to New York and saw Italian families and their displays of affection, I was taken aback a bit because it was uninhibited.”
*“We were just slogging on from day to day and making the best of it. But with a light at the end of the tunnel... AMERICA!”
*“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.”
* “All those smells... and the kids, we were the great unwashed... nobody ever knew what a shower was... We washed maybe from eyebrow to chin, week after week after week. Our crotches were innocent of water.”
*“We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.”
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