Quotes from The Glass Castle

“Things usually work out in the end."
"What if they don't?"
"That just means you haven't come to the end yet.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“....he said it was interesting. He used the word 'textured'. He said 'smooth' is boring but 'textured' was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever had tried to hurt me.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“I never believed in Santa Claus. None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn't afford expensive presents and they didn't want us to think we weren't as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus.
Dad had lost his job at the gypsum, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by one.
"Pick out your favorite star", Dad said.
"I like that one!" I said.
Dad grinned, "that's Venus", he said. He explained to me that planets glowed because reflected light was constant and stars twinkled because their light pulsed.
"I like it anyway" I said.
"What the hell," Dad said. "It's Christmas. You can have a planet if you want."
And he gave me Venus.

Venus didn't have any moons or satellites or even a magnetic field, but it did have an atmosphere sort of similar to Earth's, except it was super hot-about 500 degrees or more. "So," Dad said, "when the sun starts to burn out and Earth turns cold, everyone might want to move to Venus to get warm. And they'll have to get permission from your descendants first.
We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas 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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“Once you'd resolved to go, there was nothing to it at all.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“She had her addictions and one of them was reading.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“One thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten, you'll still have your stars.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“Life's too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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?”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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?”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“Whoever coined the phrase 'a man's got to play the hand that was dealt him' was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“I hate Erma," I told Mom...
"You have to show compassion for her..." She added that you should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. "Everyone has something good about them," she said. "You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that."
"Oh yeah?" I said. "How about Hitler? What was his redeeming quality?"
"Hitler loved dogs," Mom said without hesitation.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

“It's really not that hard to put food on the table if that's what you decide to do.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from The Glass Castle

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Popular quotes

“Look who's calling the cauldron black."

"Kettle. It’s a kettle. Get your metaphors right."

"That wasn’t a metaphor. It was a, you know..." He stared off into space, blinking. "One of those things that’s symbolic of another thing. But isn’t the same thing. Just like it."

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― Richelle Mead, quote from Succubus on Top

“I have now traveled so far south that I find myself come to a place where our common expression “white as snow” has no useful meaning. Here, one who wishes his words to make plain sense had better say “white as cotton.” I will not say that I find the landscape lovely. We go on through Nature to God, and my Northern eye misses the grandeur that eases that ascent. I yearn for mountains, or at least for the gentle ridges of Massachusetts; the sweet folds and furrows that offer the refreshment of a new vista as each gap or summit is obtained. Here all is obvious, a song upon a single note. One wakes and falls asleep to a green sameness, the sun like a pale egg yolk, peering down from a white sky.
And the river! Water as unlike our clear fast-flowing freshets as a fat broody hen to a hummingbird. Brown as treacle, wider than a harbor, this is water sans sparkle or shimmer. In places, it roils as if heated below by a hidden furnace. In others, it sucks the light down and gives back naught but an inscrutable sheen that conceals both depth and shallows. It is a mountebank, this river. It feigns a gentle lassitude, yet coiled beneath are currents that have crushed the trunks of mighty trees, and swept men to swift drownings…”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from March

“It was imperative that the growing discord in our family be made to appear minor. The indication that my father truly was beside himself was the way he had carried his argument with us to others. But we couldn’t give in to that—we were well trained. We knew our roles and our strategies without hesitation and without consultation. The paramount value of looking right is not something you walk away from after a single night. After such a night as we had, in fact, it is something you embrace, the broken plank you are left with after the ship has gone down.”
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“Little girls are kept away from the things that would make them strong, in the name of protection and propriety.”
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― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Infinity

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