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.

First of all there is always that artistic challenge of creating something. Or the particular experience to take slum life in that period and make something out of it in the form of a book. And then I felt some kind of responsibility to my family.

Keep scribbling! Something will happen.

The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.

They can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they'd be lost forever.

Before the famine, which was in the 1840s, that was an emotional turning point... There are various documents showing how the Elizabethan English, in particular, were shocked by Irish displays of affection, by the way women acted toward strangers, walking up and putting their arms around them and kissing them right full on the mouth.

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