Top 100 Quotes About Jeannette Walls
#1. 'The Glass Castle' by Jeannette Walls is the quintessential dysfunctional family.
Sara Shepard
#2. You know you're down and out when Okies laugh at you,' she said. With our garbage bag taped window, our tied down hood, and art supplies strapped to the roof, we'd out-Okied the Okies.
Jeannette Walls
#3. 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
#4. You didn't need a college degree to become one of the people who knew what was really going on. If you paid attention, you could pick things up on your own.
Jeannette Walls
#5. We both stood a better chance if we took on the world together.
Jeannette Walls
#6. It was good work, the kind of work that let you sleep soundly at night and, when you awoke, look forward to the day.
Jeannette Walls
#7. Whenever I'm reading a book I enjoy, I always develop a mental list of the people I want to share it with.
Jeannette Walls
#8. As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.
Jeannette Walls
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.
Jeannette Walls
#14. 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
#15. A little while after we'd moved into the depot, we heard Mom and Dad talking about buying us kids real beds, and we said they shouldn't do it. We liked our boxes. They made going to bed seem like an adventure.
pg. 52
Jeannette Walls
#17. Phoenix was square and straight, boxy and boxed in, and above all, fake.
Jeannette Walls
#18. Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting.
Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom.
Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have a good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.
Jeannette Walls
#19. You're in a horse race but you're thinking like a sheep. Sheep don't win horse races.
Jeannette Walls
#20. If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, just watch the sunrise.
Jeannette Walls
#21. I find books that have a moral and spiritual center, that speak to what is really important and lasting, hugely appealing.
Jeannette Walls
#22. 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
#23. I was so worried that people wouldn't like me or my story.
Jeannette Walls
#24. If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim
Jeannette Walls
#25. So they told us all about how other kids were deceived by their parents, how the toys the grown-ups claimed were made by little elves wearing bell caps in their workshop at the North Pole actually had labels on them saying MADE IN JAPAN.
Jeannette Walls
#26. God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.
Jeannette Walls
#27. He said it was interesting. He used the word 'textured'. He said 'smooth' is boring but 'textured' was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever had tried to hurt me.
Jeannette Walls
#28. Every household needs one piece of furniture in really bad taste.
Jeannette Walls
#29. We had some times, didn't we?'
'We did.'
'Never did build that Glass Castle.'
'No. But we had fun planning it.
Jeannette Walls
#31. When God closes a door, he opens a window, but it's up to you to find it.
Jeannette Walls
#32. Things usually work out in the end."
"What if they don't?"
"That just means you haven't come to the end yet.
Jeannette Walls
#34. I listen to music mostly in the evening. I've come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday.
Jeannette Walls
#37. Mom and Dad liked to make a big point about never surrendering to fear or to prejudice or to the narrow-minded conformist sticks-in-the-mud who tried to tell everyone else what was proper.
Jeannette Walls
#38. The fact is, you don't love me, and you haven't destroyed me. You don't have what it takes to do that.
Jeannette Walls
#41. I sit down at my desk pretty early in the morning and write all day until about 4 or 5 p.m.
Jeannette Walls
#42. 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
#44. Don't worry, God understands,' Mom said. 'He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.
Jeannette Walls
#46. What Dad didn't understand was that no matter how much he hated or feared the future, it was coming, and there was only one way to deal with it: by climbing aboard.
Jeannette Walls
#47. 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
#48. I found out that people are incredibly compassionate and kind. It really changed my view of the world.
Jeannette Walls
#49. Life's too short to worry about what other people think,' Mom said.'Anyway, they should accept us for who we are.
Jeannette Walls
#50. The place where you live - your home - is one of the most important things in a body's life.
Jeannette Walls
#51. 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
#52. 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
#54. I believe that everyone has some huge talent in them; the really lucky ones discover what it is.
Jeannette Walls
#55. 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
#57. 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
#58. But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.
Jeannette Walls
#61. 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
#62. Whoever coined the phrase 'a man's got to play the hand that was dealt him' was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer.
Jeannette Walls
#63. 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
#64. I've told you before, life's not about doing what you want.
Jeannette Walls
#65. 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
#66. You West Virginia girls are one tough breed," he said.
You got that right," I told him.
Jeannette Walls
#67. I was in control of what people thought of me, but I had no control over what they thought of my mother. When I asked my mother, 'How do I tell people about you?' her answer was, 'Tell the truth'. But of course, the truth is never simple.
Jeannette Walls
#69. If you went back far enough, Uncle Tinsley went on, just about
Jeannette Walls
#70. Nobody's perfect. We're all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.
Jeannette Walls
#71. My favorite books all involved people dealing with hardships.
Jeannette Walls
#72. You were free to choose enslavement, but the choice was a free one only if you knew what your alternatives were.
Jeannette Walls
#74. 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
#75. I'm a fairly fast, but sloppy writer, so I'm a big fan of re-writing, and re-writing again.
Jeannette Walls
#76. I'm a grown woman now," Mom said almost every morning. "Why can't I do what I want to do?
Jeannette Walls
#78. Bought me another snow cone, and, as he gave it to me, planted a diamond ring on top. "A piece of ice that I'm hoping will make you melt," he said.
Jeannette Walls
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. The dangerous falls were the ones that happened so fast you didn't have time to react
Jeannette Walls
#83. I never had any question that my parents loved me. I had a real sense of self confidence.
Jeannette Walls
#86. New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly.
Jeannette Walls
#87. She never felt sorry for herself, and that was something I decided I admired most in people.
Jeannette Walls
#88. 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
#90. 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
#91. I didn't have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire.
pg. 34
Jeannette Walls
#93. People are like animals. Some are happiest penned in, some need to roam free. You go to recognize what's in her nature and accept it.
Jeannette Walls
#94. I'm a big believer in luck - the harder you work, the luckier you become.
Jeannette Walls
#95. 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
#96. Woman grabbed my shirt and tried to pull me over the chain. "It's all right," I told her. "My dad does stuff like this all the time." "He should be arrested!" she shouted. "Okay, kids,
Jeannette Walls
#97. You know, if it's humanly possible, I'll get it for you. And if it ain't humanly possible, I'l die trying.
Jeannette Walls
#98. A wind picked up, rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order.
Jeannette Walls
#99. 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
#100. If I owned hell and west Texas, he said, I do believe I'd sell west Texas and live in hell.
Jeannette Walls
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