Annotations

 //These are quotes each of us found during our reading that made large impressions. We collected them together here so everyone can see what was important to us.Some of them were discussed and others were not, but these are here to outline important pieces of the story and illustrate parts that left a huge impression on us.//

**Beginning to Pg. 58:

//Quotes-//**

 "I wished I could perform a skin graft on Tinkerbell, but that would have meant cutting her into pieces. Even though her face was melted, she was still my favorite toy" (Walls 16).

"All of Dad's engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert. It would have a glass ceiling and thick walls and even a glass staricase. The Glass Castle would have solar cells on the top that would catch the sun's rays and convert them into electricity for heating and cooling and running all the appliances. It would even have its own water-purification system....He carried around the bluprints for the Glass Castle wherever we went, and sometimes he'd pull them out and let us work on the design for our rooms" (Walls 25).

"I didn't have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that 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" (Walls 34).

"That was the thing to remember about all the monsters, Dad said: They love to frighten people, but the minute you stare them down, they turn tail and run. 'All you have to do, Mountain Goat, is show old Demon that you're not afraid'" (Walls 36).

"I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straigt. Mom frowned at me. 'You'd be destroying what makes it special,' she said. 'It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty'" (Walls 38).


 * Pg. 58-93:

//Quotes-//**

"Dad kept telling me that he loved me, that he never would have let me drown, but you can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is 'If you dodn't watn to sink, you better figure out how to swim.' What other reason, he asked, would possibly make him do this? Once I got my breath back, I figured he must be right. There was no other way to explain it" (Walls 660).

"To show who was in charge, Dad left the witress a ten-dollar tip, but on the way out, Mom slipped it into her purse" (Walls 77). "'Have I ever let you down?' he asked Brian and me and then turned and walked away. In a voice so low that Dad didn't hear him, Brian said, 'Yes'" (Walls 78).

"He told me I was his favorite child, but he made me promise not to teall Lori or Brian or Maureen. It was our secret. 'I swear, honey, there are times when I think you're the only one around who still has faith in me,' he said. 'I don't know what I'd d o if you ever lost it.' I told him that I would never lose faith in him. And I promised myself I never would" (Walls 78-79).

"He was a //liar//, I told myself all the rest of the day. I hadn't really kissed him, or at least it didn't count. My eyes had been open the entire time" (Walls 86).


 * Pg. 94-159

//Quotes-//**  

"'Don't worry, God understands,' Mom said. 'He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.'" (Walls 105)

"She'd been reading books on how to cope with an alcoholic, and they said that drunks didn't remember their rampages, so if you cleaned up after them, they'd think nothing had happened. 'Your father needs to see the mess he's making of our lives,' Mom said. But when DAd got up, he'd act as if all the wreckage didn't exist, and no one discussed it with him. The rest of us had to get used to stepping over broken furniture and shattered glass" (Walls 112-113).

“When Dad went crazy, we all had our own ways of shutting down and closing off, and that was what we did that night” (Walls 115).

“‘Why do you always encourage him?’” (Walls 119).

‘“Everyone has something good about them,’ she 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” (Walls 144).

“…and as Brian and I watched, the hole for the Glass Castle’s foundation slowly filled with garbage” (Walls 155). 


 * Pg. 159-203

//Quotes-//**

"If Francie saw the good in her father, even though most people considered him a shiftless drunk, maybe I wasn't a complete fool for believing in mine. Or trying to believe in him. It was getting harder" (Walls 169).

"'I'm a sugar addict, just like your father is an alcoholic.' She told us we should forgive her the same way we always forgave Dad for his drinking" (Walls 174).

"We brought the clothes inside - the socks had hardened into the shape of question marks, and the pants were so stiff you could lean them against the wall - and we banged them against the stove, trying to soften them up. 'At least we don't need to buy starch,' Lori said" (Walls 177).

"The blue water sparkled and churned white with foam. By the time the free swim was over, my fingers and toes were completely wrinkled, and my eyes were red and stinging from the chlorine, which was so strong it wafted up from the pool in a vapor you could practically see. I'd never felt cleaner" (Walls 192).

"One thing about whoring: It put a chicken the table" (Walls 163).

" 'You're ashamed of us?' Lori called after him. Dad just kept walking" (Walls 181).

"If you don't think you're hurt, then you aren't" (Walls 184).

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' mom said. 'If that's true, I should be Hercules by now'" (Walls 179).


 * Pg. 204-235

//Quotes//-**

 "At times I felt like I was failing Maureen, like I wasn't keeping my promise that I'd protect her-the promise I'd made to her when I held her on the way home from the hospital after she'd been born. I couldn't get her what she needed most-hot baths, a warm bed, steaming bowls of Cream of Wheat before school in the morning-but I tried to do little things"(Walls 206).

 "He knew I had a soft spot for him the way no one else in the family did, and he was taking advantage of it" (Walls 209).

"The week before, I had stolen the watch without breaking a sweat. But now I was terrified that someone would catch me putting it back" (Walls 217).  "Mom's head snapped up. 'You can't talk to me like that,' she said. 'I'm your mother.'/ 'If you want to be treated like a mother,' I said, 'you should act like one' "(Walls 219).

"I thought Lori was amazing, and I had no doubt she would become a successful artist, but only if she could get to New York" (Walls 222).

 "We told Brian about the escape fund, and he pitched in, even though we hadn't included him on our plans...Without looking for thanks or praise, he quietly added his earnings to the pig, which we named Oz" (Walls 224). <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;"> "Once you'd resolved to go, there was nothing to it at all" (Walls 225).

" 'This family is falling apart,' he said./ 'It sure is,' I told him" (Walls 230).


 * Pg. 236-end

//Quotes//-** <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">

“This is just a drizzle,” she said. “Monsoons could be ahead!” (Walls 259).

“Things usually work out in the end.” “What if they don’t?” “that just means you haven’t come to the end yet" (Walls 259).

“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" (Walls 270).

“I just stood there looking from one distorted face to another, listening to this babble of enraged squabbling as the members of the Walls family gave vent to all their years of hurt and anger, each unloading his or her own accumulated grievances and blaming the others for allowing the most fragile one of us to break into pieces" (Walls 276).

“But despite all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he had created in our lives, I could not imagine what my life would be like – what the world would be like – without him in it" (Walls 279).

“I’d never met a man I would rather spend time with. I loved him for all sorts of reasons: he cooked without recipes; he wrote nonsense poems for his nieces; his large, warm family had accepted me as one of their own. And when I first showed him my scar, he said it was interesting" (Walls 286).