Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely.

I think I settled on the title before I ever wrote the book.

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

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

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.

A mother's love is a blessing No matter where you roam. Keep her while you have her, You'll miss her when she's gone -- Angela's Ashes.

You have to give yourself credit, not too much because that would be bragging.