Jeannette Walls Quotes - Page 2

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

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.

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

You're in a horse race but you're thinking like a sheep. Sheep don't win horse races.

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.

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.

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.

Anyone who thinks he's too small to make a difference has never been bit by a mosquito

My advice to anyone is to figure out what you're good at - what it is that you love doing the most in life - and figure out a way to make a living from it.

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

When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.

But the positive thoughts would give way to negative thoughts, and the negative thoughts seemed to swoop into her mind the way a big flock of black crows takes over the landscape, sitting thick in the trees and on the fence rails and lawns, staring at you in ominous silence.

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.

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

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.

The fact is, you don't love me, and you haven't destroyed me. You don't have what it takes to do that.

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

....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.

I feel like I failed," I said. "Don't beat yourself up," Jim said. "She might not have turned out like you planned, but that don't mean she turned out wrong.

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

In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.

Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.

...even though I was getting better education at home than any of the kids in Toyah, I'd need to go to finishing school when I was thirteen, both to acquire social graces and to earn a diploma. Because in this world, Dad said, it's not enough to have a fine education. You need a piece of paper to prove you go it.

Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten, you'll still have your stars.

[Optimism] acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy.