Jeannette Walls Quotes

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

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.

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 way Mom saw it, women should let menfolk do the work because it made them feel more manly. That notion only made sense if you had a strong man willing to step up and get things done, and between Dad's gimp, Buster's elaborate excuses, and Apache's tendency to disappear, it was often up to me to keep the place from falling apart. But even when everyone was pitching in, we never got out from under all the work. I loved that ranch, though sometimes it did seem that instead of us owning the place, the place owned us.

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.

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.

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

The best time to tell your story is when you have to tell your story. When it's not really a choice. But then, when you get that first, messy, complicated version down, you have to read it over and be very tough on yourself and ask, 'Well what's the story here?' If you're lucky enough to have someone you trust looking over your shoulder, he or she can help you if [you] lack perspective on your own story.

One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.

Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you are young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul.

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

It was good work, the kind of work that let you sleep soundly at night and, when you awoke, look forward to the day.

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

Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks, he'd say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was so polluted they couldn't even see the stars. We'd have to be out of our minds to want to trade places with any of them.

A lady's hair is her crowning glory

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 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.

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.

I never had any question that my parents loved me. I had a real sense of self confidence.

You'll never make a fortune working for the boss man.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

I found out that people are incredibly compassionate and kind. It really changed my view of the world.

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

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

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".

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

Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried. Fussing over children who cry only encouraged them, she told us. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Interesting people always have a past.

If you don't think you're hurt, then you aren't

In this world, it's not enough to have a fine education. You need a piece of paper to prove you got it.

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.

Living there [Horse Mesa] was like living in a natural cathedral. Waking up every morning, you walked outside and looked down at the blue lake, then up at the sandstone cliffs--those awe-inspiring layers of red and yellow rock shaped over the millennia, with dozens of black-streaked crevices that temporarily became waterfalls after rainstorms.

Don't worry, God understands,' Mom said. 'He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.

I hadn’t been paying much attention to things like the sunrise, but that old sun had been coming up anyway. It 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.