26 Quotes from The Glass Castle That Will Inspire You to Thrive

The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls in 2005, recounting her exceptionally poor upbringing at the hands of her profoundly dysfunctional parents. The book’s title denotes her dad’s long-held desire to build a glass castle.

So far, this memoir has been translated into over 20 languages and received many awards including the Christopher Award, American Library Association’s Alex Award, and the Books for Better Living Award. It encourages readers to set goals and work hard to achieve them. Here, I have listed 26 Memorable quotes from The Glass Castle that will inspire you to thrive.

​26 Quotes from The Glass Castle That Will Inspire You to Thrive

​Quotes from The Glass Castle to Inspire to Have Patience and Endurance

#1. “Things usually work out in the end.” “What if they don’t?” “That just means you haven’t come to the end yet.” “Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.”

#2. “Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature.”

#3. “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.”

#4. “Life there was hard and it made people hard.”

#5. “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.”

#6. “Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.”

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

#8. “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 when we cried. Fussing over children who cry only encouraged them, she told us. That’s positive reinforcement for negative behavior.”

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

​Quotes from The Glass Castle to Inspire You to Be Alert and Devoted

#10. “If you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim.”

#11. “You didn’t need a college degree to become one of the people who knew what was really going on. If you paid attention, you could pick things up on your own.”

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

#13. “‘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.’”

#14. “I felt best when I was on the move, going someplace rather than being there.”

#15. “I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected to the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. 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.”

​Quotes from The Glass Castle to Motive You to Love Yourself the Way You Are

#16. “Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks, he’d say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was so polluted they couldn’t even see the stars. We’d have to be out of our minds to want to trade places with any of them.”

#17. “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.”

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

#19. “It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.”

#20. “Everyone who is interesting has a past.”

#21. “It was your inner spirit and not your outward appearance that mattered.”

#22. “I could hear people around us whispering about the crazy drunk man and his dirty little urchin children, but who cared what they thought?”

#23. “Sad state to spend your life in. Being afraid of your own self.”

​Quotes from The Glass Castle to Encourage You to Be Courageous

#24. “That was the thing to remember about all 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.’”

#25. “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.”

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

​Final Thoughts

The Glass Castle is a story of heartbreak and triumph. It not only provokes thoughts but also reminds the reader that when they set goals and work hard to accomplish them, the shiny glass castle will not be just a fragile dream. The book affirms the belief that with hard work, anything is possible.

So, you should not lose hope even when everything seems not to be working. These Quotes from The Glass Castle will inspire you to be persistent so that you can turn your dream into a firm and striking reality.

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