Jeannette Walls

"Most important thing in life is learning how to fall."

"Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better."

"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."

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

"So they told us all about how other kids were deceived by their parents, how the toys the grown-ups claimed were made by little elves wearing bell caps in their workshop at the North Pole actually had labels on them saying MADE IN JAPAN."

"One of the ways to discover our toughness and resiliency is to look back at where we come from. (from Amazon description)"

"When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind."

"I feel like I failed," I said. "Don't beat yourself up," Jim said. "She might not have turned out like you planned, but that don't mean she turned out wrong."

"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. I didn’t have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes."

"That was the thing to remember about all monsters, They love to frightenpeople, but the minute you stare them down, they turn tail and run."