Frank McCourt
Teacher and memoirist; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography
It was desperate because of certain things, ingredients like my father being an alcoholic, my mother having too many babies in too short a time, no work available in Ireland, and even when my father did get a job he drank the wages. Then there was the harsh kind of schooling we had with school masters who ruled with a stick and then because of the overwhelming presence of the church, which imbued us with fear all the time. So it was fear, dampness, poverty, alcoholism, fear of the church, fear of the school masters, fear in general.
Recorded Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, Washington, D.C., 19 June 1999 source ↗