Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

"[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."

"She had her addictions and one of them was reading."

"One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by."

"Life there was hard and it made people hard."

"You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that."

"New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly."

"You didn't need a college degree to become one of the people who knew what was really going on. If you paid attention, you could pick things up on your own."

"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."

"Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential."

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