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'Tis QUOTES

'Tis QUOTES

1 " 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 , 'Tis

2 " 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 , 'Tis

3 " I felt so happy I could barely stay in my skin "

― Frank McCourt , 'Tis

4 " Com'è che appena apro bocca tutti quanti mi dicono che sono irlandesi e perché non andiamo a bere qualcosa insieme? Essere americano non basta. Bisogna essere sempre anche qualcos'altro, irlandesi-americani, tedesco americani, sicché viene da chiedersi come sarebbero andati avanti se qualcuno non avesse inventato il trattino (110). "

― Frank McCourt , 'Tis

5 " 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 , 'Tis

6 " 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 , 'Tis

7 " 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 , 'Tis

8 " 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 , 'Tis

9 " ...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 , 'Tis

10 " I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family... "

― Frank McCourt , 'Tis

11 " 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 , 'Tis

12 " 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 , 'Tis

13 " 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 , 'Tis

14 " 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 , 'Tis

15 " 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 , 'Tis

16 " 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 , 'Tis

17 " 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 , 'Tis

18 " When the dark clouds flutter like bats in my head I wish I could open a window and release them. "

― Frank McCourt , 'Tis

19 " If I had the money I could buy a torch and read till dawn. In America a torch is called a flashlight. A biscuit is called a cookie, a bun is a roll. Confectionery is pastry and minced meat is ground. Men wear pants instead of trousers and they’ll even say this pant leg is shorter than the other which is silly. When I hear them saying pant leg I feel like breathing faster. The lift is an elevator and if you want a WC or a lavatory you have to say bathroom even if there isn’t a sign of a bath there. And no one dies in America, they pass away or they’re deceased and when they die the body, which is called the remains, is taken to a funeral home where people just stand around and look at it and no one sings or tells a story or takes a drink and then it’s taken away in a casket to be interred. They don’t like saying coffin and they don’t like saying buried. They never say graveyard. Cemetery sounds nicer. "

― Frank McCourt , 'Tis

20 " She made tea in a teapot and couldn’t help sniffing at the idea of tea bags. 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 , 'Tis