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

Video

About the author

Popular quotes

“You're dying with the way things are," Della Lee said harshly, causing Josey to lower the handful of popcorn she was about to put in her mouth. "You're going to lose yourself in this, Josey. It's going to happen if you don't change. I know. I lost myself trying to find happiness in things that didn't love me back.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen

“And don’t forget the fox dung.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Forest of Secrets

“A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man . . . stops learning at fourteen or so.”
― Edward P. Jones, quote from The Known World

“She either confused me with a much older child or else she glimpsed deep inside my soul and perceived a hole that needed filling. I've always chosen to believe the latter. After all, it's the librarian's sworn purpose to bring books together with their one true reader.”
― Kate Morton, quote from The Distant Hours

“My idea is this, that when you only love a little you’re naturally not jealous-or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn’t matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you’re in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. When however you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all – whey then you’re beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.”
― Henry James, quote from The Golden Bowl

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.