Jeannette Walls Quotes

“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.”

“[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.”

“We climbed under the chain fence and knelt around Dad while he petted the cheetah. By then a few people had begun to gather. One man was calling to us to get back behind the chain fence. We ignored him. I knelt close to the cheetah. My heart was beating fast, but I wasn’t scared, only excited. I could feel the cheetah’s hot breath on my face. He looked right at me. His amber eyes were steady but sad, as if he knew he’d never see the plains of Africa again.”

“Men and women are like right and left hands it doesn't make sense not to use both.”

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

“The most important accomplishment, I believe, was my voting against the First World War.”

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”

“Men and women are like right and left hands: it doesn't make sense not to use both.”

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”

“What one decides to do in crisis depends on one's philosophy of life and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn't any philosophy in crises others make the decision.”