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.

— Jeannette Walls

I sit down at my desk pretty early in the morning and write all day until about 4 or 5 p.m.

— Jeannette Walls

It's really not that hard to put food on the table if that's what you decide to do.

— Jeannette Walls

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

— Jeannette Walls

It (the sun) didn't really care how I felt, it was going to rise and set regardless of whether I noticed it, and if I was going to enjoy it, that was up to me.

— Jeannette Walls

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. Furthermore, 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

Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.

— Jeannette Walls

Life's too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are

— Jeannette Walls

Life there was hard and it made people hard.

— Jeannette Walls

Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried. Fussing over children who cry only encouraged them, she told us. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.

— Jeannette Walls