The Glass Castle Quotes

“You can't live in fear of something as basic as fire.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Life's too short to worry about what other people think,'' Mom said.''Anyway, they should accept us for who we are.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Life is too short to worry about what other people think,”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“I didn’t want to be transported to another world. My favorite books all involved people dealing with hardships. I loved The Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Flies, and especially A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I thought Francie Nolan and I were practically identical, except that she had lived fifty years earlier in Brooklyn and her mother always kept the house clean. Francie Nolan’s father sure reminded me of Dad. If Francie saw the good in her father, even though most people considered him a shiftless drunk, maybe I wasn’t a complete fool for believing in mine. Or trying to believe in him. It was getting harder. • • •”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“I’m a grown woman now,” Mom said almost every morning. “Why can’t I do what I want to do?”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“When Dad wasn’t telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was going to do. Like build the Glass Castle.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa Claus myth and got nothing for Christmas 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, The Glass Castle

“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

“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”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Just remember,” Mom said after examining the blisters, “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” “If that was true, I’d be Hercules by now,” Lori said.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Sad state to spend your life in. Being afraid of your own self." Rex Walls”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that. Oh Yeah? I said. How about Hitler? What was his redeeming quality? Hitler loved dogs Mom said without hesitation.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“But the positive thoughts would give away to negative thoughts, and the negative thoughts seemed to swoop into her mind the way a big flock of black crows takes over the landscape, sitting thick in the trees and on the fence rails and lawns, staring at you in ominous silence.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“I was torturing the fire, giving it life, and snuffing it out.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“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”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“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. Mom stood fifteen feet away. She had tied rags around her shoulders to keep out the spring chill and was picking through the trash while her dog, a black-and-white terrier mix, played at her feet.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Okay, kids,' Dad said, 'the civilians are revolting. We better skedaddle.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“I could hear people around us whispering about the crazy drunk man and his dirty little urchin children, but who cared what they thought?”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“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”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“We’re becoming a nation of sissies.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Crockett and James Bowie got what was coming to them,” Mom said, “for stealing this land from the Mexicans”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“my promise that I’d protect her—the promise I’d made”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“The reason Dad was having a tough time getting steady work - as he kept trying to tell us - was that the electricians’ union in Phoenix was corrupt. It was run by the mob, he said, which controlled all the construction projects in the city, so before he could get a decent job, he had to run organized crime out of town. That required a lot of undercover research, and the best place to gather information was at the bars the mobsters owned. So Dad started spending most of his time in those joints”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“That was the way man was meant to live, he’d say, in harmony with the wild, like the Indians, not this lords-of-the-earth crap, trying to rule the entire goddamn planet, cutting down all the forests and killing every creature you couldn’t bring to heel.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“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.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas 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, The Glass Castle

“I’d never met a man I would rather spend time with. I loved him for all sorts of reasons: He cooked without recipes; he wrote nonsense poems for his nieces; his large, warm family had accepted me as one of their own.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“it had”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle