Malachy McCourt quotes:

Imagination in the child is powerful. Reading and laughter and love are essential in our lives.

I stay in the present, so I don't know about the future.

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

In Limerick, a family that was dysfunctional was one who could afford to drink but didn't.

I absolutely love the public transportation system in New York. No matter what, no matter how people complain, it is the best in the world.

I kind of miss the old sleazy Times Square, in a way. And yet I don't mind not being accosted by all sorts of strange people.

I tell my children, shut up and let me speak. What I've learned, I have been married for 45 years and in my own family It is that I've learned to stop being judgmental, to listen.

I had the taste of the alcohol since I was 11. It allowed me to be clever, charming and to behave outrageously. Acting also allowed me not to be me. So I could indulge every fantasy in this paradise of America.

Alcoholism is a dread, an awful, and fatal disease.

Conservatism is not a political ideology, it is a severe form of brain damage for which there's hardly any cure.

I wonder what I can do about war. Is it the destiny of human kind to eventually wipe ourselves out with these weapons of mass destruction? Are we stupid to think that we can control them?

I would like to do away with all kind of - all weapons. A dream - totally. Including the bow an arrow.

A lie to me is a dream that might come true.

Live every day as if it's going to be your last, and one day, you'll be right.

If you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you're pissing on the present.

I failed everything in school. I left when I was 13 because I had no comprehension of what the hell they were talking about up there at the blackboard. I must have that ADD thing. But, listening to people I thought, that's wonderful to be able to tell a story.

Being a kid myself, I loved playing and I loved playing with words, and making up things and riddles and songs and not afraid of being silly in public.

Corporations can deduct their planes, all their office expenses, their machinery, their computers and Teleprompters and whatever else they have. They can deduct their yachts, they can deduct their limousines, their planes, everything.

Democracy to me is letting the other person speak and being dissenting without being disagreeable.

Do whatever you want because that's not what you are. That's what you do for the moment.

I am an alcoholic, as I said. And it is however we call it, a disease. That's an explanation, but not an excuse.

I am full of theories that are based on a very liquid foundation, because I used to be a drinker.

I had great faith that perhaps this man Obama would do something, but he is, we're all in the grip of big money.

I see the way I look upon organized religion, I was a victim of that of mythology, and of cruelty, and all the absurd stuff.

I think people are so disillusioned with the parties. It's one party with two different names, and they are so spineless.

I was not a good father in my first marriage. Although there are ways of deserting the family without leaving physically, I was deserted in my head. I was always out, always in the saloons, always drinking, always messing about.

I would never become an alcoholic like my father because my father deserted us. But diseases, there's no let up.

If you look up the word "gab" in the dictionary, it's insignificant of importance, of no substance. That's what gab is.

I'm an alcoholic, recovering. And I used to smoke cigarettes, and I was a philanderer and I, wouldn't call myself good.

It's one day at a time, that's all there is to it, and so I don't have to worry about it. All I do is, okay, I do not have to drink. And if I feel like it, I postpone it for ten minutes, and that way I find something else to do in the meantime.

I've avoided work all my life, you see. So, I'm like a bee. I go from flower to flower.

I've been sober for 25. And every day I am very grateful that I don't drink.

I've seen so many horrible and awful results and consequences of people practicing alcoholism. It's murder, I've seen that. I've seen a lot of suicides, a lot of strange sins.

Limericks don't come from Limerick. But it comes from that between the verses when they used to have those competitions that they would put in the refrain, "follow me up, follow me up, follow me up to Limerick Town."

My purpose in life always has been to avoid work. And I hear these people saying, "I work hard and I pay my taxes." Well, you're an asshole.

Never make any reference to the other person's family. "You're just like your - " because that is out, completely.

Once I know I'm an alcoholic then it is my obligation, duty to see what I can do about healing myself.

Organized religions have all the facets of organized crime, except the compassion of organized crime.

That's my punishment in hell, shoveling horseshit.

That's one part of oppression is to make sure you are a shameful, shamed human being. That takes care of the past.

The alcoholism got me and I ruined my first marriage with drinking and the lying and the deceit and infidelity, and all of that. The whole bloody thing.

The future has to do with fear. Don't attempt to come up here. Don't attempt to go forward, you were nobody, you are nobody, and you'll always be nothing, so don't even think about coming here because if you do, something awful will happen to you.

The purpose of the media is to make us all spectators, to watch. So that's why we have millions of fat children watching the games, eating and consuming and not playing themselves.

The Supreme Court gives corporations the same rights as a human being. It's absurd. You can't do that.

The word is a sound of some sort and that's where the energy comes from.

There seems to be less obvious corruption in city government and New York politicians, they aren't Republican or Democrat, they're New Yorkers.

There were a few people who got jobs in Limerick, a big barrel on wheels, and it was a barrel that went back and forth, and a shovel and a broom. So, they went around shoveling the horseshit into this barrel. So, you got that job when you were around 15, and then you got to retire at the age of 65, with a pension. A small pension. So that would be 50 years of shoveling horseshit. And I was advised very seriously that I should get that job.

There's no recovery from alcoholism, it is an incurable disease. And it also is a disease that tells you, you don't have a disease.

They don't allow a dying on the highway. No Passing. They give you a ticket if you die on the highway.

This is the place for me where every single dream I ever had came to fruition and I love it dearly. I love ya, New York.

To be Irish today is the abandonment of shame and the younger people are moving it out and they're moving the fear away. They're not afraid, they're adventurous.

To lose one parent is a tragedy, to lose both is utter carelessness.

To me a saint is a severely edited sinner. That's what I think.

We are spectators to violence, and therefore are, how well we don't know and make sure we don't know the difference of real violence to that of simulation.

When an English man speaks well, for example now, and this is another way of putting us down, they say he's "eloquent" you see. "Oh, eloquent chap they are!" An Irish person speak well, they say, "Ah, you have the gift of the gab." "Ah, you kissed the blarney stone." You see, all of this putting us down.

When I'm writing in long hand, it just goes on and on and on. When I was in the saloon business, I would just greet people and talk to them and avoid taxes, and getting behind the bar. What else.

When I'm writing, I thoroughly enjoy it. It just goes on.

Whenever I'm broadcasting, I like it. When I'm broadcasting I can't wait to hear what I say.

Somebody once said that the Irish derived the greatest benefit from the English language. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter, they fling it at the sky like paint pots full of rainbow colors.

Here am I, a human being and that has a body that is getting old. And I only have one, I can't trade it in.