294 Quotes by Jeannette Walls

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.

He hired me on the spot for forty dollars a week, in cash. I was thrilled. It was my first real job. Babysitting and tutoring and doing other kids’ homework and mowing lawns and redeeming bottles and selling scrap metal didn’t count. Forty dollars a week was serious money.

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.

If you went back far enough, Uncle Tinsley went on, just about.

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.

She was keeping it, she explained, to replace the wedding ring her mother had given her, the Dad had pawned shortly after they got married. ‘But Mom,’ I said, ‘that ring could get us a lot of food.’ ‘That’s true,’ Mom said, ’but it could also improve my self-esteem. And at times like these, self-esteem is even more vital than food.

Once you’d resolved to go, there was nothing to it at all.

Elvis Presley’s death was a turning point in news coverage;.

At the same time, Dad was working on a book arguing the case for phonetic spelling. He called it ‘A Ghoti out of Water.’ “Ghoti,” he liked to point out, could be pronounced like “fish.” The “gh” had the “f” sound in “enough,” the “o” had the short “i” sound in “women,” and “ti” had the “sh” sound in “nation.