294 Quotes by Jeannette Walls

You can’t prepare for everything life’s going to throw at you. And you can’t avoid danger. It’s there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you’ll out on all the adventure.

We each needed to respect the religious practices of others, seeing as it was up to every human being to find his or her own way to heaven.

We raised our glasses. I could almost hear Dad chuckling at Mom’s comment in the way he always did when he was truly enjoying something. It had grown dark outside. A wind picked up, rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order.

My older sister achieved her dream of being an artist. She’s an illustrator living in Manhattan.

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.

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.

I took a breath. “He’s developing a technology to.

Lori wanted Mom to try on the glasses, too. Mom slipped them on and, blinking, looked around the room. She studied one of her own paintings quietly, then handed the glasses back to Lori. “Did you see better?” I asked. “I wouldn’t say better,” Mom answered. “I’d say different.

Mom was thirty-eight, not young but not old, either. In twenty-five years, I told myself, I’d be as old as she was now. I had no idea what my life would be like then, but as I gathered up my schoolbooks and walked out the door, I swore to myself that it would never be like Mom’s, that I would not be crying my eyes out in an unheated shack in some.