Every household needs one piece of furniture in really bad taste.
As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.
When Dad wasn’t telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was going to do. Like build the Glass Castle.
Things usually work out in the end.What if they don't?That just means you haven't come to the end yet.
If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, Mom always said, just watch the sunrise. And if you want to be reminded of the wrath of the Lord, Dad said, watch a tornado.
I'm none too big on giving advice,' Aunt Al said. 'Most times when folks ask for advice, they already know what they should do. They just want to hear it from someone else.
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.
I hate Erma, I told Mom...You have to show compassion for her... She added that you should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them, she said. You have to fin...
Brian told Mom we needed to keep Maureen away from those nutty Pentecostals, but Mom said we all came to religion in our own individual ways and we each need to respect the religious practices of othe...
Mom, you have to leave Dad, I said. She stopped doing her toe touches. I can’t believe you would say that, she said. I can’t believe that you, of all people, would turn on your father. I was Dad’s las...
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 justifiab...
Mom and Dad liked to make a big point about never surrendering to fear or to prejudice or to the narrow-minded conformist sticks-in-the-mud who tried to tell everyone else what was proper.
Ironing was a particularly galling waste of time. You'd spend twenty minutes pressing one shirt front and back, spraying starch and getting the creases sharp, but once the man of the house put it on,...
I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.
A little while after we'd moved into the depot, we heard Mom and Dad talking about buying us kids real beds, and we said they shouldn't do it. We liked our boxes. They made going to bed seem like an a...
We had some times, didn't we?''We did.''Never did build that Glass Castle.''No. But we had fun planning it.
It was good work, the kind of work that let you sleep soundly at night and, when you awoke, look forward to the day.