“It's not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you'd wonder how they'd get along if someone hadn't invented the hyphen”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“I told her tea bags were just a convenience for people with busy lives and she said 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 into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“...you, the privileged, the chosen, the pampered, with nothing to do but go to school, hang out, do a little studying, go to college, get into a money-making racket, grow into your fat forties, still whining, still complaining, when there are millions around the world who'd offer fingers and toes to be in your seats, nicely clothed, well fed, with the world by the balls.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family...”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“Andy says, I don't understand how they can give loans to people who want to spend two weeks lying on the sand at the goddam Jersey shore and then turn down a woman with three kids hanging on by her fingernails.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“They can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they'd be lost forever.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“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.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“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?”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“I'm in New York, land of the free and home of the brave, but I'm supposed to behave as if I were in Limerick at all times.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“Here I am looking at my lovely ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, in her white dress, singing Protestant hymns with the choir at the Plymouth Church of the Brethren when I should be at Mass praying for the repose of the soul of my mother, Angela McCourt, mother of seven, believer, sinner, though when I contemplate her seventy-three years on this earth I can’t believe the Lord God Almighty on His throne would even dream of consigning her to the flames. A God like that wouldn’t deserve the time of day.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“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.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“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.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“Menen Horacen luo ja puristan hänenkin kättään. En pysty sanomaan mitään, koska tunnen jollakin merkillisellä tavalla rakastavani häntä ja toivon että hän olisi isäni, eikä silloin ole helppo puhua. Hän ei sano mitään koska tietää hyvin että tällaisina hetkinä sanoilla ei ole merkitystä. Hän vain taputtaa minua olalle, ja viimeinen mitä Port Warehousesissa kuulen on Eddie Lynchin ääni kun hän sanoo miehille takaisin töihin siitä, senkin vetelä mulkkulauma.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“Dolores asuu talossa, jonka pienellä etupihalla on neitsyt Marian patsas ja vaaleanpunainen lintupatsas. Seisomme pienen rautaportin luona ja minä en oikein tiedä pitäisikö nyt suudella häntä jolloin hän saattaisi innostua niin että saattaisimme hiippailla jonkin puun taakse kiihotusta harjoittamaan, mutta samassa kuuluu sisältä karjaisu Jumalauta, Dolores, äkkiä sisään sieltä, jo on otsaa kun tuolla lailla perkele pikkutunneilla kotiin lampsitaan, ja sano sille perkeleen turvenuijalle että ottaa jalat alleen ja juoksee henkensä edestä, ja Dolores sanoo vain oi ja juoksee sisään.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“When the dark clouds flutter like bats in my head I wish I could open a window and release them.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“Haloo, kuuluuko? Minulla on tässä munakello päällä ja teillä on nyt kolme minuuttia aikaa kertoa miten minä saan nuo perkeleen neiti suo anteeksi pulut kuriin etteivät ne paneskele kaiken aikaa minun ilmastointilaitteeni päällä tuolla ikkunan ulkopuolella. Kaiken päivää saa kuunnella niiden huhuhuuta niin että hulluksi meinaa tulla ja sitten ne paskantavat ikkunat umpeen. Ai ette pysty heti sanomaan? Pitää selvittää ensin? Mitä siinä on selvittämistä? Pulut rietastelevat minun ilmastointilaitteellani ja teidän pitää ruveta selvittämään. Valitan, munakello sanoo että kolme minuuttia on kulunut. Hyvästi.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“For once, mam, my bladder isn't near my eye and why isn't it?”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
“I'm sitting up in the bed with my knees pulled to my chest and there are tears that won't come to my eyes but beat instead like a small sea around my heart.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from 'Tis A Memoir
Frank McCourt
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
Born date August 19, 1930
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“sweeping, simplistic solutions to complicated problems are much more appealing than tackling the real thought that might actually solve them.”
― David Weber, quote from The Honor of the Queen
“Childhood is such a delicate tissue; what they had done this morning could snag somewhere in the little ones, make a dull, small pain that will circle back again and again, and hurt them in small ways for the rest of their lives.”
― Lauren Groff, quote from Arcadia
“Ouça-me este conselho: em política, não se perdoa nem se esquece nada.”
― Machado de Assis, quote from Quincas Borba
“The methods of meditation taught by the Buddha in the Pali Canon fall into two broad systems. One is the development of serenity (samatha), which aims at concentration (samādhi); the other is the development of insight (vipassanā), which aims at understanding or wisdom (paññā). In the Buddha’s system of mental training the role of serenity is subordinated to that of insight because the latter is the crucial instrument needed to uproot the ignorance at the bottom of saṁsāric bondage. The attainments possible through serenity meditation were known to Indian contemplatives long before the advent of the Buddha. The Buddha himself mastered the two highest stages under his early teachers but found that, on their own, they only led to higher planes of rebirth, not to genuine enlightenment (MN 26.15–16). However, because the unification of mind induced by the practice of concentration contributes to clear understanding, the Buddha incorporated the techniques of serenity meditation and the resulting levels of absorption into his own system, treating them as a foundation and preparation for insight and as a “pleasant abiding here and now.”
― quote from The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya
“I often think that in the world we live in today, where we are threatened by forces as violent and primitive as anything we have ever faced, that it would be wise to look back a little ourselves and embrace our heritage. We were once a nation of hunters. And not the effete, European-style hunters who did it for sport. We hunted for our food, our independence. It’s what made us who we are. But, like so many other virtues that made us unique, we have, as a society, forgotten where we came from and how we got here. What was once both noble and essential has become perverted and indefensible.”
― C.J. Box, quote from Blood Trail
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Neither Here nor The...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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