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7e30979
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History gets written by the winners, he said, and when the crooks win, you get crooked history.
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Jeannette Walls |
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4070981
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Mom and Dad liked to make a big point about never surrendering to fear or to prejudice or to the narrow-minded conformist sticks-in-the-mud who tried to tell everyone else what was proper.
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Jeannette Walls |
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3250c95
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Mom could say that in hindsight, but it seemed to me that when you were in the middle of something, it was awful hard to figure out what part of it was God's will and what wasn't.
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Jeannette Walls |
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8fc6f90
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I told Mom that maybe I had made a terrible mistake, but mom said sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.
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Jeannette Walls |
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accd664
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Fussing over children who cry only encourages them. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.
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cry
parenting
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Jeannette Walls |
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77f4a9b
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The baby went without a name for weeks. Mom said she wanted to study it first, the way she would the subject of a painting. We had a lot of arguments over what the name should be. I wanted to call her Rosita, after the prettiest girl in my class, but Mom said the name was too Mexican. "I thought we weren't supposed to be prejudiced," I said. "It's not being prejudiced," Mom said. "It's a matter of accuracy in labeling."
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Jeannette Walls |
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c43e243
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A lady's hair is her crowning glory
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lady
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Jeannette Walls |
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abe145a
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Mom, you have to leave Dad," I said. She stopped doing her toe touches. "I can't believe you would say that," she said. "I can't believe that you, of all people, would turn on your father." I was Dad's last defender, she continued, the only one who pretended to believe all his excuses and tales, and to have faith in his plans for the future. "He loves you so much," Mom said. "How can you do this to him?" "I don't blame Dad," I said. And I d..
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Jeannette Walls |
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fed3caf
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Poor old Venus didn't even make her own light, Dad said. She shone only from reflected light.
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Jeannette Walls |
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b58794d
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From the time the Joshua tree was a tiny sapling, it had been so beaten down by the whipping wind that, rather than trying to grow skyward, it had grown in the direction that the wind pushed it. It existed now in a permanent state of windblowness, leaning over so far that it seemed ready to topple, although, in fact, its roots held it firmly in place. pg. 35
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Jeannette Walls |
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b684817
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Then he pointed to the top of the fire, where the snapping yellow flames dissolved into an invisible shimmery heat that made the desert beyond seem to waver, like a mirage. Dad told us that zone was known in physics as the boundary between turbulence and order. "It's a place where no rules apply, or at least they haven't figured 'em out yet," he said. "You-all got a little too close to it today."
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Jeannette Walls |
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9a2cef6
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There was nothing to compare with standing on a piece of land you owned free and clear. No one could push you off it, no one could take it from you, no one could tell you what to do with it.
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Jeannette Walls |
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56f812a
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You're not supposed to laugh at your own father. Ever.
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parents
respect
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Jeannette Walls |
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2b068df
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Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail- the gumption to try and save ourselves- isn't that what he wanted us to do?
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religion
god
hard-work
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Jeannette Walls |
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d93a0c3
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I'd rather have a yard filled with genuine garbage than with trashy lawn ornaments.
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Jeannette Walls |
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b8d8d92
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Sometimes it didn't matter how much gumption you had. What mattered were the cards you'd been dealt.
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turn-of-the-century-texas
truth
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Jeannette Walls |
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5058857
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If you get down, all you need to do is act like you're feeling good, and next thing you know, you are.
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Jeannette Walls |
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d75e67b
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The world seemed divided into girls with boyfriends and girls without them. It was the distinction that mattered the most, practically the only one that did matter. But I knew that boys were dangerous. They'd say they loved you, but they were always after something.
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Jeannette Walls |
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a363b3b
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To all families who, despite their scars, still find a way to love.
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Jeannette Walls |
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53658f1
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I'm not upset because I'll miss you," Mom said. "I'm upset because you get to go to New York and I'm stuck here. It's not fair."
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Jeannette Walls |
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e7f5ecd
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Everyone has something good about them," she said. "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."
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Jeannette Walls |
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a5f50a5
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Life's too short to worry about what other people think,'' Mom said.''Anyway, they should accept us for who we are.
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Jeannette Walls |
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6fa6437
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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 big difference between needing things and wanting things--though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart--and at the ranch, I could see, we'd have pretty much everything we'd need but precious little else.
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wanting
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Jeannette Walls |
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73558b8
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You were free to choose enslavement, but the choice was a free one only if you knew what your alternatives were.
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Jeannette Walls |
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eafdae1
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One day we heard on the radio that a woman in the suburbs had seen a mountain lion behind her house and had called the police, who shot the animal. Dad got so angry he put his fist through a wall. "That mountain lion had as much right to his life as that sour old biddy does to hers," he said. "You can't kill something just because it's wild."
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peta
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Jeannette Walls |
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470c0d5
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How many places have we lived?" I asked Lori. "That depends on what you mean by 'lived', "she said. "If you spend one in some town, did you live there? What about two nights? Or a whole week? " I thought. "If you unpack all your things," I said. We counted eleven placed we had lived, then we lost track. We couldn't remember the names of some of the towns or what the houses we had lived in looked like. Mostly, I remember the inside of car..
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Jeannette Walls |
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4ed3441
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She knew how to get by on next to nothing. pg. 21
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Jeannette Walls |
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a127e08
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The road was called Agnes weeps, after the town's first schoolteacher, who had burst into tears when she saw how plunging and twisting the road was and realized how remote the town must be. But from the first moment I laid eyes on it, I loved that road. I thought of it as a winding staircase taking me out of the traffic jams, news bulletins, bureaucrats, air-raid sirens and locked doors of city life. Jim said we should rename the road Lilly..
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Jeannette Walls |
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747cdf8
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Dad was on the porch, pacing back and forth in that uneven stride he had on account of having a gimp leg. When he saw, he let out a yelp of delight and started hobbling down the steps towards us. Mom came running out of the house. She sank down on her knees, clasped her hands in front of her, and started praying up to the heavens, thanking the Lord for delivering her children from the flood. It was she who had saved us, she declared, by sta..
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flash-flood
religion
love
natural-disaster
guardian-angel
parents
mother
children
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Jeannette Walls |
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59f9e28
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As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.
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sadness
life
love
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Jeannette Walls |
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561b985
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Mom] said she didn't want her youngest daughter dressed in the thrift-store clothes the rest of us wore. 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 good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering."
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glass-castle
jeannette-walls
family
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Jeannette Walls |
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2f4d4ec
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It was your inner spirit and not your outward appearance that mattered,
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Jeannette Walls |
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a48d2e4
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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.
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Jeannette Walls |
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70dbc83
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The place where you live - your home - is one of the most important things in a body's life.
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Jeannette Walls |
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8135d81
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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.
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Jeannette Walls |
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c41ba85
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I felt there was a lot I needed to teach her. I wanted to give her an early grounding in the basics of arithmetic and reading, but even more important, I wanted to get across the idea that the world was a dangerous place and life was unpredictable and you had to be smart, focused, and determined to make it through. You had to be willing to work hard and persevere in the face of misfortune. A lot of people, even those born with brains and be..
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Jeannette Walls |
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fcd8c39
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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.
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Jeannette Walls |
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c0430bb
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Helen and Buster got down and started praying with Mom, but I just stood there looking at them. The way I saw it, I was the one who'd saved us all, not Mom and not some guardian angel.
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Jeannette Walls |
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95ad372
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Dad's death didn't hollow me out the way Helen's had. After all, everyone had assumed Dad was a goner back when he got kicked in the head as a child. Instead, he had cheated death and, despite his gimp and speech impediment, lived a long life doing pretty much what he wanted. He hadn't drawn the best of cards, but he'd played his hand darned well, so what was there to grieve over?
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life
luck
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Jeannette Walls |
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c477eca
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At the same time, Dad was working on a book arguing the case for phonetic spelling. He called it 'A Ghoti out of Water.' "Ghoti," he liked to point out, could be pronounced like "fish." The "gh" had the "f" sound in "enough," the "o" had the short "i" sound in "women," and "ti" had the "sh" sound in "nation."
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Jeannette Walls |
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e817fd7
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You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them," [Jeannette's mom] said. "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."
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love-your-enemies
hitler
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Jeannette Walls |
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5ba0045
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I'm none too big on giving advice,' Aunt Al said. 'Most times when folks ask for advice, they already know what they should do. They just want to hear it from someone else.
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Jeannette Walls |
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d27d361
|
I'm a grown woman now," Mom said almost every morning. "Why can't I do what I want to do?"
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Jeannette Walls |
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b53c920
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Life's too short to worry about what other people think... Anyway, they should accept us for who we are.
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Jeannette Walls |