Quotes from book

The Glass Castle

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

“Things usually work out in the end."
"What if they don't?"
"That just means you haven't come to the end yet.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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?”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

“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.”

“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.”