I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family.
Frank MccourtRead
I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the realization of one's personal value despite feeling insignificant in the grand scheme of life.
Frank McCourt's quote highlights the journey of understanding that each person's life, while it may seem insignificant compared to the vastness of the universe, holds unique significance. It suggests that through introspection and experience, individuals can discover that their existence contributes to the larger narrative of humanity, and that every life has its own importance and meaning.
In practice
During a motivational speech about finding purpose in life.
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.
Kids all want to look cool, as if knowledge is a great burden, but they're always looking around. They remember.
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.
But black people fall for that same argument, and they go around talking about law breakers. We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws. Those laws that keep them up, keep us down.
We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.
Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.
When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door, and we are purely independent of, and at the same time, dependent upon everything.
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