Jeannette Walls
She never felt sorry for herself, and that was something I decided I admired most in people.Collection: Sorry
All seasons have something to offerCollection: Offers
Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature.Collection: Luck
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.Collection: Mom
Don't be afraid of your dark places. ... If you can shine a light on them, you'll find treasure there.Collection: Dark
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.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Mother
Whoever coined the phrase 'a man's got to play the hand that was dealt him' was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Running
One of the many lessons I hope I've learned is how much I underestimated people, their open-mindedness and their willingness to understand. I think, moreover, I underestimated the degree to which everyone has a story. So my advice, for whatever it's worth, is to trust readers, trust the truth and trust the power of storytelling.Collection: Writing
You'll never make a fortune working for the boss man.Collection: Men
I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected o the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. 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. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.Collection: Dog
One thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table.Collection: Tables
Fussing over children who cry only encourages them. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.Collection: Children
She had her addictions and one of them was reading.Collection: Reading
If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swimCollection: Swim
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.Collection: Who I Am
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.Collection: Teacher
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?Collection: Looks
Since Mom wasn't exactly the most useful person in the world, one lesson I learned at an early age was how to get things done, and this was a source of both amazement and concern for Mom, who considered my behavior unladylike but also counted on me. "I never knew a girl to have such gumption," she'd say. "But I'm not too sure it's a good thing.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Teacher
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 itCollection: Book
She was developing what Mom called a bit of a sarcastic streak.Collection: Mom
A lady's hair is her crowning gloryCollection: Hair
What I do know is that wondering why you survived don't help you survive.Collection: Helping
When I got a little older, I started writing for the high school newspaper, The Maroon Wave, and that's when I fell in love with journalism.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Mom
The dangerous falls were the ones that happened so fast you didn't have time to reactCollection: Fall
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.Collection: Mom
Don't you make fun of me or my children! Some babies are premature. Mine were all postmature. That's why they're so smart. Their brains had longer to develop.Collection: Baby
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.Collection: Mom
New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly.Collection: Unfriendly
It was good work, the kind of work that let you sleep soundly at night and, when you awoke, look forward to the day.Collection: Sleep
Mom could say that in hindsight, but it seemed to me that when you were in the middle of something, it was awful hard to figure out what part of it was God's will and what wasn't.Collection: Mom
If you had weak eyes, they needed exercise to get strong. Glasses were like crutches. They prevented people with feeble eyes from seeing the world on their own.Collection: Strong
As I sat down, though, I realized that you can get used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things--though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart--and at the ranch, I could see, we have pretty much everything we'd need but precious little else.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Thinking
Don't worry, God understands,' Mom said. 'He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.Collection: Mom
You West Virginia girls are one tough breed," he said. You got that right," I told him.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Horse
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Mom
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".Collection: Mom
Don’t you make fun of me or my children! Some babies are premature. Mine were all postmature. That’s why they’re so smart. Their brains had longer to develop.Collection: Fun
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.Collection: Firsts
I was so worried that people wouldn’t like me or my story.Collection: Stories
Whenever I’m reading a book I enjoy, I always develop a mental list of the people I want to share it with.Collection: Reading