Jeannette Walls Quotes
30 quotes • Memoirist • Age 66
"Things usually work out in the end.""What if they don't?""That just means you haven't come to the end yet."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Most important thing in life is learning how to fall."
"Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more."
"One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by."
"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."
"Nobody's perfect. We're all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels."
"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."
"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."
"If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim"