Jeannette Walls - Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel (2009)

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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.

Jeannette Walls
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".

Jeannette Walls
I became known as Lily Casey, the mustang-breaking, poker-playing, horse-race-winning schoolmarm of Coconino County, and it wasn't half bad to be in place where no one had a problem with a woman having a moniker like that.

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

Jeannette Walls
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
Anyone who thinks he's too small to make a difference has never been bit by a mosquito.

Jeannette Walls
I hadn't been paying much attention to things like the sunrise, but that old sun had been coming up anyway. It 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.

Jeannette Walls
If I owned hell and west Texas, he said, I do believe I'd sell west Texas and live in hell.

Jeannette Walls
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.

Jeannette Walls
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 the planet and wasting everybody's time.

Jeannette Walls
Sometimes after I finished a particularly good book, I had the urge to get the library card, find out who else had read the book, and track them down to talk about it

Jeannette Walls
But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.

Jeannette Walls
Mom could say that in hindsight, but it seemed to me that when you were in the middle of something, it was awful hard to figure out what part of it was God's will and what wasn't.

Jeannette Walls
As I sat down, though, I realized that you can get used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things—though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart—and at the ranch, I could see, we have pretty much everything we'd need but precious little else.

Jeannette Walls
When someone's wounded, the first order of business is to stop the bleeding. You can figure out later how best to help them heal.

Jeannette Walls
The dangerous falls were the ones that happened so fast you didn't have time to react

Jeannette Walls
God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.

Jeannette Walls