Jeannette Walls Quotes

“Life's too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are”

“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.”

“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.”

“She had her addictions and one of them was reading.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Life there was hard and it made people hard.”

“Memoir is about handing over you life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it.”

“Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Interesting people always have a past.”

“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.”

“Nobody's perfect. We're all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.”

“You're in a horse race but you're thinking like a sheep. Sheep don't win horse races.”

“One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”

“If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

“Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.”

“Once you'd resolved to go, there was nothing to it at all.”

“If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, just watch the sunrise.”

“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.”

“Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.”

“Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten, you'll still have your stars.”

“We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa Clause myth and got nothing but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. 'Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten,' Dad said, ' you'll still have your stars.”

“The fact is, you don't love me, and you haven't destroyed me. You don't have what it takes to do that.”

“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?”

“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?”

“Whoever coined the phrase 'a man's got to play the hand that was dealt him' was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer.”

“Teaching is a calling too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy - angels leading their flocks out of the darkness.”

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

“Horses were never wrong. They always did what they did for a reason, and it was up to you to figure it out.”

“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.”

“If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.”

“God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.”

“It's really not that hard to put food on the table if that's what you decide to do.”

“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.”

“But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.”

“She was developing what Mom called a bit of a sarcastic streak.”

“sometimes after I finished a particularly good book, I had the urge to get the library card, find out who else had read the book, and track them down to talk about it”

“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.”

“It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.”

“It (the sun) didn't really care how I felt, it was going to rise and set regardless of whether I noticed it, and if I was going to enjoy it, that was up to me.”

“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.”

“When God closes a door, he opens a window, but it's up to you to find it.”