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.

They were the great architects who have gone before. So they were architects like Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright. Of course, they were alive at the time that I was studying. But there were also, for me, not just buildings.

I spent time with Rauschenberg a lot during the combine period. I think just around the combine period. He had a big influence on me because he was very free and not full of philosophy and why I’m doing this and that. Some of the artists had this anchor of having to be — relate sometimes to Hegel and Kant and Nietzsche. It was sort of baggage that they brought to the table that was irrelevant. I mean it was in their head and it was relevant, but it was irrelevant to this moment of truth. So I found the artists that were kind of “dumb smart,” that were really smart but didn’t parade it, that were willing to take the risks and stuff.

Jim Lawson. Jim Lawson was an unbelievable human being. Born in Ohio. He was a pacifist. He studied Gandhi. He was part of the Methodist Student Movement. He lived in India. He became an organizer for FOR, the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

But the book I give right now in this time of so much despair is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, where he really looks at people in the Holocaust and asks himself, why did some just sort of crumple up and die and others stayed resilient and strong? And that at the end of the day, no one can take our dignity away from us.

I don’t. Need a better system. Feel too owned by it right now.

I would say just start, but don’t start by asking, “What is my purpose? What is my passion?” Start by asking, “What are the problems that need to be solved? Which ones attract me?” And take a step toward that. Take one step, and the work will teach you where you need to take the next step. Build tools in your toolbox.

It is usually 4 or 5 in the morning so I go downstairs and make tea and then read a bit of poetry – Mary Oliver, Rumi, Hafiz, Seamus Heaney, Yeats, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda, Rilke are among my favorites…

Eleanor Roosevelt. She represents a woman of great privilege, who never shied away from that privilege. She used her privilege to help the most vulnerable, the voices unheard.

My ability to connect with people. I think I can see people and they feel it.