Quotes from Jeannette Walls

Those braces are a goddamn feat of engineering genius," he said. "You take after your old man.

Everyone has something good about them," she said. "You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.

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. That

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

I found the gas, he said. Now all's I need to do is find the brake.

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.

What I wanted to say was that I knew Eric would never try to steal my paycheck or throw me out the window, that I'd always been terrified I'd fall for a hard-drinking, hellraising, charismatic scoundrel like you, Dad, but I'd wound up with a man who was exactly the opposite.

spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour

Mom said we should all live near the Pacific Ocean at least once in our lives, so we kept going all the way to San Francisco.

my promise that I'd protect her—the promise I'd made

The barn was dark from the storm, and we couldn't find the harness, which no one had used in years. Old Jake, who had sprained his good foot falling off a horse and was hobbling around worse than ever, started getting panicky at the idea of the dam giving out and washing away the cattle, but I told him to hush his mouth. We all knew what was at stake, and if we were going to save the ranch, we needed clear heads.

aficionados of the weather. We'd follow a storm

He never said anything, but I think he figured that, as when we were kids, we both stood a better chance if we took on the world together.

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

As for the learning itself, I figured you didn't need a college degree to become on of the people who knew what was really going on. If you paid attention, you could pick things up on your own.

I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all. There was a difference between needing things and wanting things--though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart...

You busted your snot locker pretty good.

Rich city folks, he'd say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was so polluted that they couldn't even see the stars.

I began to feel like I was getting the whole story for the first time, that I was being handed the missing pieces to the puzzle, and the world was making a little more sense.

Living there [Horse Mesa] was like living in a natural cathedral. Waking up every morning, you walked outside and looked down at the blue lake, then up at the sandstone cliffs--those awe-inspiring layers of red and yellow rock shaped over the millennia, with dozens of black-streaked crevices that temporarily became waterfalls after rainstorms.

Even more important than saving money is making it.

Phoenix was square and straight, boxy and boxed in, and above all, fake.

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.

I've told you before, life's not about doing what you want.