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.

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.

I had always wanted a watch. Unlike diamonds, watches were practical. They were for people on the run, people with appointments to keep and schedules to meet. That was the kind of person I wanted to be.

She snuggled into bed with them, looking up from time to time, saying she was sorry, she knew she should be doing something more productive, but like Dad, she had her addictions, and one of hers was reading.

Life there was hard and it made people hard.

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

I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected to the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. I didn’t have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.

Horses were never wrong. They always did what they did for a reason, and it was up to you to figure it out.

They're so weird and so beautiful," she said."Like you," I said.I meant it as a joke, but Liz nodded. She felt that she was sort of like an emu herself, she said. Maybe that was why she'd had flying dreams ever since she was a little girl -- at heart, she was an emu. She was sure the emus also dreamed of flying. It was another thing they had in common. Both she and the emus wanted to fly -- they just didn't have the wings they wanted.