- Narrator: [First lines] When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how my brothers and I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood. The happy childhood is hardly worth telling. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood. And worse still is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
- Angela McCourt: If I could work, I'd be in the English factories.
- Malachy: A factory's no place for a woman.
- Angela McCourt: Sittin' on your arse is no place for a man.
- Angela McCourt: [Showing Oliver a painting of Jesus] That's the baby Jesus. And if you ever need anything, you should pray to him.
- Young Malachy: [Whispered to Frankie] Could you tell Jesus that we're hungry?
- Young Frank: Shut up!
- Narrator: If I were in America I could say "I love you, dad", the way they do in the films. But in Limerick they'd laugh at you. In Limerick you are only allowed to say you love God, and babies, and horses that win. Anything else is softness in the head.
- [the twins are crying]
- Young Malachy: Look at my bum!
- Young Frank: Stop showing your bum!
- Young Malachy: I was just trying to make them laugh!
- Angela McCourt: I was thinking of calling him Alphonsius.
- Middle Frank: Alphonsius? That's a stupid name!
- Middle Michael: [after Malachy makes weak excuses for returning from England with no money] You drank the money, Da.
- Middle Malachy: You drank the money.
- Middle Frank: You drank the money.
- Mrs. Leibowitz: What is it, Malachy?
- Malachy: It's a beautiful wee girl, Mrs. Liebowitz! After four boys, can you believe it? A wee girl.
- Older Frank: [drunk, yelling at Angela] Every night you went up there! Squeak Squeak Squeak with Laman Griffin!
- Delia: I swear it's the Northern Ireland in you. It attracts the dirt. You've the dirty gob of your father.
- Young Frank: It's the twins. Their arses are shitty.
- Delia: It's a mouth like a sewer you have. No wonder. With a father from the north of Ireland with his funny manner and his Protestant ways. You could go to hell saying a thing like that.
- Narrator: We must have been the only Irish family in history to be saying good-bye to the Statue of Liberty instead of hello. We were going back to Ireland where there was no work and people were dying of the starvation and the damp. It made no sense to me, but what did I know. I was only five going on six.
- Young Mikey Molloy: Now, on top, the girls have great floppy things called titties. And at the end of them, great red things like dogs' noses. And down at the bottom - now that's an entirely different matter. They don't have a mickey down there.
- Narrator: My friend, Mikey Molloy, tells us all about how much money we'll make at the Collection after our First Communion, when we all knock on the neighbors' doors and get as much as five shillings for sweets and cakes and even go to the Lyric Cinema to see James Cagney.
- Young Frank: I listened to dirty things about girls from the lanes - who don't care what they do because they - because they've already done it with their brothers.
- Grandma Sheehan: Will you look at that mop? It won't lie down. You didn't get this hair from our side of the family. This is North of Ireland hair you got from your father. It's like - like what you'd see on a Presbyterian.
- [spits on Frank's hair]
- Young Frank: Will you stop spitting on me?
- Grandma Sheehan: A little spit won't kill you. If your mother had married a proper, decent Limerick man, you wouldn't have stand-up, North of Ireland, Protestant hair.
- Young Frank: Mam, can I go now and make the Collection? I want to go to the Lyric to see James Cagney.
- Dotty O'Neill: What use is Euclid? Without Euclid, the Messerschmitt could never have taken to the sky and dart from cloud to cloud and bomb the be Jesus out of the English, who deserve it after what they did to the Irish for 800 years. Euclid is grace and beauty and elegance.
- Dance Teacher: Would you stop the frowning Frankie McCourt? You've a face on you like a pound of tripe.
- Grandma Sheehan: Will you look at him? The manners of a pig. He eats like a Presbyterian. Is it a millionaire you think I am? An American?
- Narrator: I want to be Fred Astaire. Irish dancers look like they have steel rods stuck up their arses.
- Narrator: I'm glad I did the First Communion. I'm glad I got my First Confession over and done with. Now I'm free to grow up. Old enough to be ten, anyway. Old enough to pay the ultimate penance for growing up. Worse than joining the army or the police or going to Australia or becoming a nun in Africa. Worse than that, I had to learn Irish dancing.
- Quasimodo: Okay, it's a shilling for the three of you. Climb up the spout, and each of youse have a look, but no wankin'!
- Middle Paddy Clohessy: I've my own sisters. Why should I pay to see your naked sisters?
- Quasimodo: 'Cause looking at your own naked sisters is the worst sin of all. Not even a bishop in the world could forgive you for it.
- Middle Frank: What can you see?
- Older Mikey Molloy: Oh, it's grand.
- Middle Paddy Clohessy: Can you see their tits, Mikey?
- [Mikey moans]
- Quasimodo: I said no wankin', Molloy. There's to be no wankin' up the spout.
- Older Mikey Molloy: Oh, it's grand.
- Quasimodo: I said no wankin' up the spout!
- Middle Paddy Clohessy: Frankie, I'm telling you, that dancing stuff is for sissies. You won't be able to play football next.
- Middle Frank: I won't?
- Middle Paddy Clohessy: You'll be running around girlie-like.
- Middle Frank: Shut up.
- Middle Paddy Clohessy: Everyone will be laughing at you.
- Middle Frank: They will?
- Middle Paddy Clohessy: Next thing, you'll be knitting socks.
- Narrator: Mikey Molloy persuaded us to go to Peter Dooley's house. Peter Dooley has a hump like the one Charles Laughton had... in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. That's why they call him Quasimodo. Oh, and he has these four sisters with the enormous breasts.
- Malachy: God is good, you know.
- Angela McCourt: God might be good for someone somewhere, but he hasn't been seen lately in the lanes of Limerick.
- Malachy: Oh, Angela. You could go to hell for saying that.
- Angela McCourt: Aren't I there already, Malachy?
- Narrator: Begging for leftovers is worse than the dole. Worse than the St. Vincent de Paul Charity. My own mother begging. This is the worst kind of shame - begging for the leftovers from the priests' dinner. Like tinkers holding up their scabby children on street corners. Worse than borrowing from the money lender.
- Angela McCourt: Get off me, will you? I'm worn out. That's the end of it for me. No more children.
- Malachy: A good Catholic woman should perform her wifely duties.
- Angela McCourt: Oh, feck off, will you?
- Malachy: You'll face eternal damnation, Angela.
- Angela McCourt: Well, as long as there are no more children, eternal damnation sounds just fine to me, Malachy.
- Grandma Sheehan: Frankie, come with me. And put your mac on.
- Older Frank: I haven't got a mac.
- Grandma Sheehan: Jesus, what a family.
- Mrs. Purcell: Isn't it grand, the radio, Frankie?
- Older Frank: 'Tis, Mrs. Purcell.
- Mrs. Purcell: Do you see Bedouins in the Sahara - and the cowboys on the prairie?
- Older Frank: I do. And people sipping wine in cafes. And sailors in their galleons sipping their cocoa. And plays about the Greeks, where they have to pluck out their eyes because they married their mothers by mistake.
- Mrs. Purcell: And the Shakespeare. I love the Shakespeare.
- Older Frank: Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, Mrs. Purcell. You can't get enough of 'em.
- Mrs. Purcell: I'm sure Mr. Shakespeare must have been an Irishman.
- Narrator: Paddy Clohessy found a priest to confess our hideous sins to. He's 90 years old and deaf as a turnip.
- Laman Griffin: Woman, boil some water for tea.
- Angela McCourt: We've no coal or turf.
- Laman Griffin: You useless great lump, living free under me roof with you snotty-nosed pack of brats.
- Mr. O'Halloran: America, wonderful land of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Sioux, Apache, Iroquois. Poetry, boys. And the chiefs! Listen. Kicking Bear, Rain-in-the-Face, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the man himself, the genius Geronimo. Stock your minds, boys, and you can move through the world - resplendent.
- Laman Griffin: Angela, the chamber pot is full.
- Angela McCourt: Is there anything else your lordship would like?
- Laman Griffin: Woman's work, Angela. Woman's work and free rent.
- Angela McCourt: People who write letters like that should be boiled in oil and then have their fingernails pulled out by blind people.
- Uncle Pat: What happened to your face? It's all swole. Did someone punch you?
- Older Frank: Yeah.
- Uncle Pat: Who was punching you?
- Older Frank: Joe Louis.
- Uncle Pat: Joe Louis? I thought he lived in America. Was he visiting Limerick?
- Older Frank: He was, Uncle Pat.
- Uncle Pat: That's not right, him hitting a wee boy... and him being heavyweight champion of America and all.
- Older Frank: The world champion he is, Uncle Pat.
- Uncle Pat: That's worse. And look at you, so skinny. Those arms wouldn't lift two stamps.