He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you canโt make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.
Frank McCourtI just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.
Frank McCourtMy childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn.
Frank McCourtAndy says, I don't understand how they can give loans to people who want to spend two weeks lying on the sand at the goddam Jersey shore and then turn down a woman with three kids hanging on by her fingernails.
Frank McCourtSit 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.
Frank McCourt