Jeannette Walls citations

Page 2

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Interesting people always have a past.”

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

“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.”

“Unlike diamonds, watches were practical. They were for people on the run, people with appointments to keep and schedules to meet.”

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