294 Quotes by Jeannette Walls

Six months later, Maureen stabbed Mom.

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.

You know you’re down and out when Okies laugh at you,′ she said. With our garbage bag taped window, our tied down hood, and art supplies strapped to the roof, we’d out-Okied the Okies.

The dangerous falls were the ones that happened so fast you didn’t have time to react.

On our way back from the candy store, Brian and I liked to spy on the Green Lantern – a big dark green house with a sagging porch right near the highway. Mom said it was a cathouse, but I never saw any cats there, only women wearing bathing suits or short dresses who sat or lay out on the porch, waving at the cars that drove by. There were Christmas lights over the door all year round, and Mom said that was how you could tell it was a cathouse.

A wind picked up, rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order.

The inconsistent spelling of words in the English language also vexed Dad to no end. Digraphs such as “sh” and “ph” infuriated him, and silent letters made him grieve. If words were simply spelled the way they were pronounced, he argued, pretty much anyone who learned the alphabet could read, and that would virtually wipe out illiteracy.

What struck me most was his crooked grin, like he saw the world in his own special way and got a kick out of it.

I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster. It was just after dark. A blustery March wind whipped the steam coming out of the manholes, and people hurried along the sidewalks with their collars turned up. I was stuck in traffic two blocks from the party where I was heading.