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

The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.

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.

Teacher? I never dreamed I could rise so high in the world

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

You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.

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