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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 a good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.

Jeannette Walls

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Jeannette Walls
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: April 21
Journalist
Writer
Phoenix
Arizona
Littles
Mom
Reason
Rules
Little
Exactly
Sin
Mind
Asked
Shoplifting
Good
Told
Justifiable
Would
Sort
Homicide
Like
Doesn
Bending

More quotes by Jeannette Walls

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It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.
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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.
Jeannette Walls
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My advice to anyone is to figure out what you're good at - what it is that you love doing the most in life - and figure out a way to make a living from it.
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When I asked my mother, ‘how do I tell people about you’ her answer was ‘tell the truth’. But of course, the truth is never simple.
Jeannette Walls
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...even though I was getting better education at home than any of the kids in Toyah, I'd need to go to finishing school when I was thirteen, both to acquire social graces and to earn a diploma. Because in this world, Dad said, it's not enough to have a fine education. You need a piece of paper to prove you go it.
Jeannette Walls
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When I got a little older, I started writing for the high school newspaper, The Maroon Wave, and that's when I fell in love with journalism.
Jeannette Walls
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....he said it was interesting. He used the word 'textured'. He said 'smooth' is boring but 'textured' was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever had tried to hurt me.
Jeannette Walls
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I found out that people are incredibly compassionate and kind. It really changed my view of the world.
Jeannette Walls
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Look at the way you live. You've sold out. Next thing I know you'll become a Republican. She shook her head. Where are the values I raised you with?
Jeannette Walls
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Unlike diamonds, watches were practical. They were for people on the run, people with appointments to keep and schedules to meet.
Jeannette Walls
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It's really not that hard to put food on the table if that's what you decide to do.
Jeannette Walls
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Since Mom wasn't exactly the most useful person in the world, one lesson I learned at an early age was how to get things done, and this was a source of both amazement and concern for Mom, who considered my behavior unladylike but also counted on me. I never knew a girl to have such gumption, she'd say. But I'm not too sure it's a good thing.
Jeannette Walls
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I hadn’t been paying much attention to things like the sunrise, but that old sun had been coming up anyway. It 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
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Living there [Horse Mesa] was like living in a natural cathedral. Waking up every morning, you walked outside and looked down at the blue lake, then up at the sandstone cliffs--those awe-inspiring layers of red and yellow rock shaped over the millennia, with dozens of black-streaked crevices that temporarily became waterfalls after rainstorms.
Jeannette Walls
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God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.
Jeannette Walls
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Life's too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are
Jeannette Walls
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One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.
Jeannette Walls
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Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you are young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul.
Jeannette Walls
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Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.
Jeannette Walls
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Whoever coined the phrase 'a man's got to play the hand that was dealt him' was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer.
Jeannette Walls