Quote

She wore tight corsets to give her a teeny waist - I helped her lace them up - but they had the effect of causing her to faint. Mom called it the vapors and said it was a sign of her high breeding and delicate nature. I thought it was a sign that the corset made it hard to breathe.

Jeannette Walls

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Jeannette Walls
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: April 21
Journalist
Writer
Phoenix
Arizona
Hard
Effect
Causing
Teeny
Giving
Mom
Breeding
Vapors
Made
Effects
Wore
Corset
Called
Tight
Corsets
High
Delicate
Vapor
Nature
Helped
Waist
Thought
Sign
Lace
Give
Breathe
Faint

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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.
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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.
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She never felt sorry for herself, and that was something I decided I admired most in people.
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Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature.
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Life's too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are
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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.
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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?
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Mom also hinted a couple of times that it was good I was going to college, since with one failed marriage behind me, I 'd have trouble landing a good husband and would need something to fall back on. A package that's been opened once doesn't have the same appeal.
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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.
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I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.
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No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids. Unloved children grow up to be serial murderers or alcoholics.
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But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.
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But the positive thoughts would give way to negative thoughts, and the negative thoughts seemed to swoop into her mind the way a big flock of black crows takes over the landscape, sitting thick in the trees and on the fence rails and lawns, staring at you in ominous silence.
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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.
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She had her addictions and one of them was reading.
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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.
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I sit down at my desk pretty early in the morning and write all day until about 4 or 5 p.m.
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No one expected you to amount to much, she told me. Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard.
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Whenever I'm reading a book I enjoy, I always develop a mental list of the people I want to share it with.
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One of the most challenging aspects of writing a memoir is finding your own voice, and you should be very careful about being influenced by someone else's voice.
Jeannette Walls