Top 100 Jeannette Walls Quotes
#1. Mom also hinted a couple of times that it was good I was going to college, since with one failed marriage behind me, I 'd have trouble landing a good husband and would need something to fall back on. "A package that's been opened once doesn't have the same appeal".
Jeannette Walls
#2. As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.
Jeannette Walls
#3. I'm not so sure," Dad said. "Every damn thing in the universe can be broken down into smaller things, even atom, even protons, so theoretically speaking, I guess you had a winning case. A collection of things should be considered one thing. Unfortunately, theory don't always carry the day.
Jeannette Walls
#4. I'm none too big on giving advice,'
Aunt Al said. 'Most times when folks ask for advice, they already know what they should do. They just want to hear it from someone else.
Jeannette Walls
#5. And if the world went to hell in a handbasket-as it seemed to be doing-you could say good-bye to everyone and retreat to your land, hunkering down and living off it.
Jeannette Walls
#6. The world seemed divided into girls with boyfriends and girls without them. It was the distinction that mattered the most, practically the only one that did matter. But I knew that boys were dangerous. They'd say they loved you, but they were always after something.
Jeannette Walls
#7. Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature.
Jeannette Walls
#8. Phoenix was square and straight, boxy and boxed in, and above all, fake.
Jeannette Walls
#9. If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, just watch the sunrise.
Jeannette Walls
#10. I find books that have a moral and spiritual center, that speak to what is really important and lasting, hugely appealing.
Jeannette Walls
#11. You can't prepare for everything life's going to throw at you. And you can't avoid danger. It's there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you'll out on all the adventure.
Jeannette Walls
#12. I was so worried that people wouldn't like me or my story.
Jeannette Walls
#13. God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.
Jeannette Walls
#14. When God closes a door, he opens a window, but it's up to you to find it.
Jeannette Walls
#19. I sit down at my desk pretty early in the morning and write all day until about 4 or 5 p.m.
Jeannette Walls
#20. That was the thing to remember about all monsters, They love to frighten
people, but the minute you stare them down, they turn tail and run.
Jeannette Walls
#22. Don't worry, God understands,' Mom said. 'He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.
Jeannette Walls
#23. There was nothing to compare with standing on a piece of land you owned free and clear. No one could push you off it, no one could take it from you, no one could tell you what to do with it.
Jeannette Walls
#24. I found out that people are incredibly compassionate and kind. It really changed my view of the world.
Jeannette Walls
#25. It's so much of what art and creativity are, being able to confront your own demons. If you can do that, you can get through just about everything.
Jeannette Walls
#26. Horses were never wrong. They always did what they did for a reason, and it was up to you to figure it out.
Jeannette Walls
#28. I believe that everyone has some huge talent in them; the really lucky ones discover what it is.
Jeannette Walls
#29. I became known as Lily Casey, the mustang-breaking, poker-playing, horse-race-winning schoolmarm of Coconino County, and it wasn't half bad to be in place where no one had a problem with a woman having a moniker like that.
Jeannette Walls
#30. Books are my very favorite gift to give. If you give a book to someone and they really respond to it, you feel you've actually changed their life in some way.
Jeannette Walls
#31. But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.
Jeannette Walls
#34. Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?
Jeannette Walls
#35. Helen and Buster got down and started praying with Mom, but I just stood there looking at them. The way I saw it, I was the one who'd saved us all, not Mom and not some guardian angel.
Jeannette Walls
#36. I've told you before, life's not about doing what you want.
Jeannette Walls
#37. Look at the way you live. You've sold out. Next thing I know you'll become a Republican." She shook her head. "Where are the values I raised you with?
Jeannette Walls
#38. You West Virginia girls are one tough breed," he said.
You got that right," I told him.
Jeannette Walls
#39. If you went back far enough, Uncle Tinsley went on, just about
Jeannette Walls
#40. You were free to choose enslavement, but the choice was a free one only if you knew what your alternatives were.
Jeannette Walls
#41. My advice to anyone is to figure out what you're good at - what it is that you love doing the most in life - and figure out a way to make a living from it.
Jeannette Walls
#43. In this world, it's not enough to have a fine education. You need a piece of paper to prove you got it.
Jeannette Walls
#44. No one expected you to amount to much," she told me. "Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard.
Jeannette Walls
#45. When someone's wounded, the first order of business is to stop the bleeding. You can figure out later how best to help them heal.
Jeannette Walls
#48. New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly.
Jeannette Walls
#49. She never felt sorry for herself, and that was something I decided I admired most in people.
Jeannette Walls
#50. Don't be afraid of your dark places," Mom told her. "If you can shine a light on them, you'll find treasure there.
Jeannette Walls
#52. She wore tight corsets to give her a teeny waist - I helped her lace them up - but they had the effect of causing her to faint. Mom called it the vapors and said it was a sign of her high breeding and delicate nature. I thought it was a sign that the corset made it hard to breathe.
Jeannette Walls
#54. I'm a big believer in luck - the harder you work, the luckier you become.
Jeannette Walls
#55. Sometimes something catastrophic can occur in a split second that changes a person's life forever; other times one minor incident can lead to another and then another and another, eventually setting off just as big a change in a body's life.
Jeannette Walls
#56. I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made you think it just might be possible to get a handle on this old world after all.
Jeannette Walls
#57. If I owned hell and west Texas, he said, I do believe I'd sell west Texas and live in hell.
Jeannette Walls
#58. Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.
Jeannette Walls
#59. Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.
Jeannette Walls
#60. If you get down, all you need to do is act like you're feeling good, and next thing you know, you are.
Jeannette Walls
#61. It was your inner spirit and not your outward appearance that mattered,
Jeannette Walls
#62. Crockett and James Bowie got what was coming to them," Mom said, "for stealing this land from the Mexicans
Jeannette Walls
#63. Mom could say that in hindsight, but it seemed to me that when you were in the middle of something, it was awful hard to figure out what part of it was God's will and what wasn't.
Jeannette Walls
#64. Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.
Jeannette Walls
#65. [Marriage] made the hard moments easier and the good moments better.
Jeannette Walls
#66. Life's too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are
Jeannette Walls
#67. People say that when you return to the place where you grew up, it always seems smaller than you remember ... but I don't know if it was because I had built it up in my memories or I had gotten bigger. Maybe both.
Jeannette Walls
#68. During the sermon, the priest discussed the miracle of Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth. "Virgin, my ass!" Dad shouted. "Mary was a sweet Jewish broad who got herself knocked up!
Jeannette Walls
#69. Dad said High Lonesome, as the area was known, wasn't a place for the soft of head or the weak of heart, and he said that was why he and I made out just fine there, because we were both tough nuts.
Jeannette Walls
#70. The tree burst into color and we all gasped at the red, yellow, green, white and the blue lights boldly growing in the cold night, the only lights for miles around in the inmense darkness of the range.
Jeannette Walls
#71. If you had weak eyes, they needed exercise to get strong. Glasses were like crutches. They prevented people with feeble eyes from seeing the world on their own.
Jeannette Walls
#72. What struck me most was his crooked grin, like he saw the world in his own special way and got a kick out of it.
Jeannette Walls
#73. She loved the dry, crackling heat, the way the sky at sunset looked like a sheet of fire, and the overwhelming emptiness and severity of all that open land that had once been a huge ocean bed.
pg. 21
Jeannette Walls
#74. The women I know with strong personalities, the ones who might have become generals or the heads of companies if they were men, become teachers. Teaching is a calling, too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy
angles leading their flocks out of the darkness.
Jeannette Walls
#75. One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.
Jeannette Walls
#76. One of the ways to discover our toughness and resiliency is to look back at where we come from. (from Amazon description)
Jeannette Walls
#77. In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.
Jeannette Walls
#79. Horses are a mirror of who you are. They're emotionally dependent on you.
Jeannette Walls
#80. I felt best when I was on the move, going someplace rather than being there.
Jeannette Walls
#82. No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids. Unloved children grow up to be serial murderers or alcoholics.
Jeannette Walls
#83. I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.
Jeannette Walls
#84. Okay, kids,' Dad said, 'the civilians are revolting. We better skedaddle.
Jeannette Walls
#85. Don't you make fun of me or my children! Some babies are premature. Mine were all postmature. That's why they're so smart. Their brains had longer to develop.
Jeannette Walls
#86. We should never eat the liver of a polar bear because all the vitamin A in it could kill us.
Jeannette Walls
#87. People worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you. It immunized your body and soul ...
Jeannette Walls
#88. I never met a kid I couldn't teach. Every kid was good at something, and the trick was to find out what it was, then use it to teach him everything else. It was good work, the kind of work that let you sleep soundly at night and, when you awoke, look forward to the next day.
Jeannette Walls
#89. You're not supposed to laugh at your own father. Ever.
Jeannette Walls
#90. One of the most challenging aspects of writing a memoir is finding your own voice, and you should be very careful about being influenced by someone else's voice.
Jeannette Walls
#91. When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.
Jeannette Walls
#92. Most important thing in life," he would say, "is learning how to fall." *
Jeannette Walls
#93. You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.
Jeannette Walls
#94. But I also hoped that [she] had chosen California because she thought that was her true home, the place where she really belonged, where it was always warm and you could dance in the rain, pick grapes right off the vines, and sleep outside at night under the stars.
Jeannette Walls
#95. I reached my full height at age 11, and I was clumsy as all get-out - all elbows and knees, couldn't get up a flight of stairs without falling down. I wanted to be a cute, petite blonde, but I'm a big ol' strapping thing, so I just accept it.
Jeannette Walls
#96. Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail- the gumption to try and save ourselves- isn't that what he wanted us to do?
Jeannette Walls
#97. I think you'd make a wonderful teacher. You have a strong personality. The women I know with strong personalities, the ones who might have become generals or the heads of companies if they were men, become teachers.
Jeannette Walls
#98. Poor old Venus didn't even make her own light, Dad said. She shone only from reflected light.
Jeannette Walls
#99. But the positive thoughts would give way to negative thoughts, and the negative thoughts seemed to swoop into her mind the way a big flock of black crows takes over the landscape, sitting thick in the trees and on the fence rails and lawns, staring at you in ominous silence.
Jeannette Walls
#100. Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.
Jeannette Walls
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
