We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

I wish that I could be around 15 years from now, 100 years ... .

But it happened and it was only after I retired tired and looked back on my career that I realized the strong connection between what I did and my success. And I know that I would not be in as good a place as I am today had I not done that.

Kopp ’89 Discusses Education Reform, Looking Beyond the Classroom | Princeton Alumni Weekly

The last teacher I had was a man named O’Halloran. But he was the only one who offered words of encouragement, who told us we were distinct, unique individuals with a right to think for ourselves. And that was just before we left Leamy’s National School. And he told me, “My boy, you are a literary genius.” And you can imagine what I had to put up with at the schoolyard with all the others. “Hey, McCourt, you’re a literary genius. Look at him. Look at the literary genius.

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.