People worried too much about their children. Suffering when you’re young is good for you. It immunized your body and soul…

The water you kids were playing in, he said, had probably been to Africa and the North Pole. Genghis Khan or Saint Peter or even Jesus may have drunk it. Cleopatra might have bathed in...

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...

You’ll never make a fortune working for the boss man

Most important thing in life is learning how to fall.

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...

Fussing over children who cry only encourages them. That’s positive reinforcement for negative behavior.

You’re in a horse race but you’re thinking like a sheep. Sheep don’t win horse races.

If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, just watch the sunrise.

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.

You have a mighty high opinion of yourself, I told him. The fact is, you don’t love me, and you haven’t destroyed me. You don’t have what it takes to do that

Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten, you’ll still have your stars.

The way Mom saw it, women should let menfolk do the work because it made them feel more manly. That notion only made sense if you had a strong man willing to step up and...

Dad’s death didn’t hollow me out the way Helen’s had. After all, everyone had assumed Dad was a goner back when he got kicked in the head as a child. Instead, he had cheated death...

God deals us all different hands. How we play ’em is up to us.

It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.

One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.

Once you’d resolved to go, there was nothing to it at all.

I could see why Archimedes got all excited. There was nothing finer than the feeling that came rushing through you when it clicked and you suddenly understood something that had puzzled you. It made you...

You know you’re down and out when Okies laugh at you,’ she said. With our garbage bag taped window, our tied down hood, and art supplies strapped to the roof, we’d out-Okied the Okies.

Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail- the gumption to try and save ourselves- isn’t that what he wanted us to do?

You can’t prepare for everything life’s going to throw at you. And you can’t avoid danger. It’s there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you’ll...

She had her addictions and one of them was reading.

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...

It (the sun) 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.

Once you go on welfare it changes you. Even if you get off welfare, you never escape the stigma that you were a charity case. You’re scarred for life.

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.

Horses were never wrong. They always did what they did for a reason, and it was up to you to figure it out.

People are like animals. Some are happiest penned in, some need to roam free. You go to recognize what’s in her nature and accept it.

You’re not supposed to laugh at your own father. Ever.

It’s really not that hard to put food on the table if that’s what you decide to do.

The women I know with strong personalities, the ones who might have become generals or the heads of companies if they were men, become teachers. Teaching is a calling, too. And I’ve always thought that...

The sound of thunder awake me, and when I got up, my feet sank into muddy water up to my ankles. Mother took Buster and Helen to high ground to pray, but I stayed behind...

When people kill themselves, they think they’re ending the pain, but all they’re doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.

That was the thing to remember about all monsters, They love to frightenpeople, but the minute you stare them down, they turn tail and run.

Nobody’s perfect. We’re all just one step up from the beasts and one step down from the angels.

You should never hate anyone, not even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You had to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.

Teaching is a calling too. And I’ve always thought that teachers in their way are holy – angels leading their flocks out of the darkness.

New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly.

Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.

Life there was hard and it made people hard.

I feel like I failed,” I said. “Don’t beat yourself up,” Jim said. “She might not have turned out like you planned, but that don’t mean she turned out wrong.

If you want to be treated like a mother, act like one.

…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...

Life’s too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are

[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...

Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you’re young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids...

Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.

You can’t cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is “If you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim

In this world, it’s not enough to have a fine education. You need a piece of paper to prove you got it.