"Things usually work out in the end."
"What if they don't?"
"That just means you haven't come to the end yet."
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)

"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.""
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)

"....he said it was interesting. He used the word 'textured'. He said 'smooth' is boring but 'textured' was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever had tried to hurt me."
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)

"One thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table."
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)

"Memoir is about handing over you life to someone and saying, This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it."
— Jeannette Walls

"Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you are young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul."
— Jeannette Walls

"Look at the way you live. You've sold out. Next thing I know you'll become a Republican." She shook her head. "Where are the values I raised you with?"
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)

"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 o 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 at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes."
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)

"Mom became even more concerned about my values when my editor offered me a job writing a weekly column about what he called the behind-the-scenes doings of the movers and shakers. Mom thought I should be writing exposes about oppressive landlords, social injustice, and the class struggle on the Lower East Side. But I leaped at the job, because it meant I would become one of those people who knew what was really going on. Also, most people in Welch had a pretty good idea how bad off the Walls family was, but the truth was, they all had their problems, too--they were just better than we were at covering them up. 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."
— Jeannette Walls

"No one expected you to amount to much," she told me. "Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard."
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)

""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.'""
— Jeannette Walls

"Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting.
"Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom.
"Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have a good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.""
— Jeannette Walls

"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."
— Jeannette Walls (Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel)

"But I also hoped that [she] had chosen California because she thought that was her true home, the place where she really belonged, where it was always warm and you could dance in the rain, pick grapes right off the vines, and sleep outside at night under the stars."
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)

""You West Virginia girls are one tough breed," he said.
"You got that right," I told him."
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)