I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family.
Frank MccourtRead
Kids all want to look cool, as if knowledge is a great burden, but they're always looking around. They remember.
Interpretation
Children may pretend that knowledge is a burden, but they are always observing and learning from their surroundings.
In this quote, Frank McCourt highlights the paradox of youth's perception towards knowledge. While kids often adopt an attitude that suggests a disdain for the effort involved in learning, their natural curiosity leads them to pay attention and absorb information from their environment, revealing that they value knowledge more than they let on.
In practice
During a school assembly, a teacher could reference this quote to inspire students to appreciate their education.
I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family.
Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I'm still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don't worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.
That's what kept us going - a sense of absurdity, rather than humor.
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 might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
We had nothing, no television, no radio, nothing to get in the way. We read by the streetlight at the top of the lane, and we acted out the stories.
I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together.
Teenagers have more intense reading experiences because they've had fewer of them. It's like the first time you fall in love. You have a connection to that first person you fell in love with because it was so intense and unprecedented.
Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.
Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.
Though we do need more women to graduate with technical degrees, I always like to remind women that you don't need to have science or technology degrees to build a career in tech.
Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
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