Glass Castle Quotes

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. ~ Jeannette Walls

'The Glass Castle' by Jeannette Walls is the quintessential dysfunctional family. ~ Sara Shepard

I love memoirs and biographies, learning about other people's lives. Two of the ones that I loved so much were actually edited by the same person who edited my book, too. I loved 'Angela's Ashes.' I loved 'Glass Castle' so much. ~ Isabel Gillies

Kaltain flowed into the room, spreading her arms wide, and became shadowfire, became freedom and triumph, became a promise hissed in a dungeon beneath a glass castle:
Punish them all. ~ Sarah J. Maas

If the Vaults were the heart of Rifthold's underworld, then the glass castle was the soul of Adarlan's empire. ~ Sarah J. Maas

The King of Adarlan is dead," Manon said. The world stopped. "Aelin Galathynius killed him and shattered his glass castle."

Elide covered her mouth with a hand, shaking her head. Aelin... Aelin...

"She was aided," Manon went on, "by Prince Aedion Ashryver."
Elide began sobbing.

"And rumor has it Lord Ren Allsbrook is working in the North as a rebel."

Elide buried her face in her hands. Then there was a hard, iron-tipped hand on her shoulder.

A tentative touch.

"Hope," Manon said quietly. ~ Sarah J. Maas

The Crown Prince tipped his head back to the sky and roared, and it was the battle cry of a god. Then the glass castle shattered. ~ Sarah J. Maas

She snuggled into bed with them, looking up from time to time, saying she was sorry, she knew she should be doing something more productive, but like Dad, she had her addictions, and one of hers was reading. ~ Jeannette Walls

We were specks, bits of glass and dust. We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that. ~ Amy Harmon

Therese leaned closer toward it, looking down at her glass. She wanted to thrust the table aside and spring into her arms, to bury her nose in the green and gold scarf that was tied close about her neck. Once the backs of their hands brushed on the table, and Therese's skin there felt separately alive now, and rather burning. ~ Patricia Highsmith

...that, to repeat what I heard for years and years and suspect you've been hearing over and over, yourself, something's meaning is nothing more or less than its function. Et cetera et cetera et cetera. Has she done the thing with the broom with you? No? What does she use now? No. What she did with me--I must have been eight, or twelve, who remembers--was to sit me down in the kitchen and take a straw broom and start furiously sweeping the floor, and she asked me which part of the broom was more elemental, more fundamental, in my opinion, the bristles or the handle. The bristles or the handle. And I hemmed and hawed, and she swept more and more violently, and I got nervous, and finally when I said I supposed the bristles, because you could after a fashion sweep without the handle, by just holding on to the bristles, but couldn't sweep with just the handle, she tackled me, and knocked me out of my chair, and yelled into my ear something like, 'Aha, that's because you want to sweep with the broom, isn't it? It's because of what you want the broom for, isn't it?' Et cetera. And that if what we wanted a broom for was to break windows, then the handle was clearly the fundamental essence of the broom, and she illustrated with the kitchen window, and a crowd of the domestics gathered; but that if we wanted the broom to sweep with, see for example the broken glass, sweep sweep, the bristles were the thing's essence. No? What now, then? With pencils? No matter. Meaning as fundamentaln ~ David Foster Wallace

You have your orders," Mab shouted at the guards. "To the Deeps with her."
The men led me from the great hall, taking me along a series of corridors to the back of the castle, then winding through another long corridor and into a spiraling stairwell that appeared to have no end. We went further and further down until finally it ended so deep in the ground it felt like a grave. My pulse quickened as we reached the bottom.
A single dark door lay ahead. ~ H.D. Smith

Castle Face Records, run by The Oh Sees main man, Johnny Dwyer is always worth checking in with. ~ Henry Rollins

No moon, sun, diamond, hands - fingertip, dot, ray, gauze, sea. pine green, pink glass, eye, mine, eraser, mud, mother, I am coming. ~ Frida Kahlo

Are you afraid?" Volker questioned while sitting at the table and getting comfortable.
"No. But I have incredible luck with dice and I am ruthless. You will lose, gentlemen. I will destroy your lands, take your women, ravish your men, and make your children my slave labor. I will own every castle, house, and farm that is within my reach. I won't be satisfied until I own all of it and you. I will destroy you all, gentlemen, and, to be quite blunt, I don't think you can handle it. ~ Shelly Laurenston

It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way. ~ Christopher Morley

Now, I've another errand for you,' said my untiring master; "you must away to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!--a clod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open the middle drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a little glass you will find there,--quick!"

I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels.

"That's well! Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a dose myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome, of an Italian charlatan--a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not a thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion: as now, for instance. Jane, a little water."

He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water-bottle on the washstand.

"That will do;--now wet the lip of the phial."

I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented it to Mason.

"Drink, Richard: it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or so."

"But will it hurt me?--is it inflammatory?"

"Drink! drink! drink!"

Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He was dressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied. Mr. Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the liquid; he then took his arm--

"Now I am sure you can get on your feet," he said--"try."

The patient ros ~ Charlotte Bronte

In the fall he picked up his phone one afternoon to hear Grandma Lynn.
'Jack,' my grandmother announced, 'I am thinking of coming to stay.'
My father was silent, but the line was riddled with his hesitation.
'I would like to make myself available to you and the children. I've been knocking around in this mausoleum long enough.'
'Lynn, we're just beginning to start over again,' he stammered. Still, he couldn't depend on Nate's mother to watch Buckley forever. Four months after my mother left, her temporary absence was beginning to take on the feel of permanence.
My grandmother insisted. I watched her resist the remaining slug of vodka in her glass. 'I will contain my drinking until'- she thought hard here- 'after five o'clock, and,' she said,' what the hell, I'll stop altogether if you should find it necessary.'
'Do you know what you're saying?'
My grandmother felt a clarity from her phone hand down to her pump-encased feet. 'Yes, I do. I think'
It was only after he got off the phone that he let himself wonder, Where will we PUT her?
It was obvious to everyone.

~pgs 213-214; Grandma Lynn and Jack; ~ Alice Sebold

The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? Harry's mind was in freefall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossiblity, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying - ~ J.K. Rowling

I think when we talk of craft we talk of a certain set of processes, whether that be clay of glass if jewelry or textiles, and we look back through history instantly. ~ Grayson Perry

Start looking at the glass as half full and not half empty, a positive life is secondary to you being positive. ~ Unarine Ramaru

We all are wearing many hundred glasses of different colors. Therefore, everyone sees the world in different views. Somehow, if we could remove those glasses, we can see the world with real colors. Name of the most difficult to remove glass is 'there are permanent things of mine. ~ Muditha Champika

A sharp rap at her window startled her even further, and her blood rushed in a charge from her head to her feet. She blinked and blinked again, but the tall figure at the window didn't appear to be going anywhere.
"It's really wet out here, y'know," came a muffled voice from the other side of the glass. "Are you going to ignore me for much longer? ~ Frankie Rose

As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In theory, I would like to lead a transparent life. I wold like my life to be as clear as a new pane of glass, without anything shameful and no dark shadows. I would like that. But if I am completely honest, I have to acknowledge secrets too painful to even tell myself. There are things I consider in the deep dark of night, secret terrors. Why are they secrets? I could easily tell either of my parents how I feel, but what would they say? Don't worry, darling, we will do our best never to die? We will never ever leave you, never contract cancer or walk in front of a bus or collapse of old age? We will not leave you alone, not ever, to navigate the world and all of its complexities without us? ~ Meg Rosoff

At last he reached out and with a gentle hand, closed Valentine's eyes.
"Ave atque vale, Shadowhunter," he said. ~ Cassandra Clare

Friendship in marriage is its own thing: friendship in a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, or a cappuccino every Sunday morning. Friendship in buying undershirts and underpants. Friendship in picking up a prescription or rescuing the towed car. Friendship in waiting for the phone call after the mammogram. Friendship in toast buttered just so. Friendship in shoveling the snow. I am the one you want to tell. You are the one I want to tell. ~ Elizabeth Alexander

Frederick the Great once said that the greatest crime in war is not to make the wrong decision, but to make no decision.' Again the Prince gestured at Sharpe with the brandy glass. 'You should remember that axiom, Sharpe!' Sharpe did not even know what an axiom was, but he nodded respectfully. 'I will, sir. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Rainstorms are incredible: falling shards of glass, the air full of diamonds. ~ Lauren Oliver

Make Learning Magical ~ Tamara L. Chilver

If I go before I'm old, Oh brother of mine please don't forget me if I go. Bartender please, fill my glass for me? With the wine you gave Jesus that set him free, after three days in the ground. ~ Dave Matthews

We blame you for floods
for the flush of blood
for men who are also wolves
and even though you could pull
the tide in by its hair
we tell people that we walked all
over you
we blame you for the night
for the dark
for the ghosts
you cold unimaginable thing
following us home,
we use you
to see each others frail
naked bodies beneath your blue light,
we let you watch; you
swollen against the glass
breath a halo of steam
as we move against one another
wet and desperate
like fish under
a waterlogged sky. ~ Warsan Shire

Rincewind agreed moodily. He tried to explain that magic had indeed once been wild and lawless, but had been tamed back in the mists of time by the Olden Ones, who had bound it to obey among other things the Law of Conservation of Reality; this demanded that the effort needed to achieve a goal should be the same regardless of the means used. In practical terms this meant that, say, creating the illusion of a glass of wine was relatively easy, since it involved merely the subtle shifting of light patterns. On the other hand, lifting a genuine wineglass a few feet in the air by sheer mental energy required several hours of systematic preparation if the wizard wished to prevent the simple principle of leverage flicking his brain out through his ears. ~ Terry Pratchett

Take control of the situation. Be an alpha guy. Instead of - Hell, I don't know which letter of the Greek alphabet you're now, but it's not a good one.
(Neal,"A Veil of Glass and Rain") ~ Petra F. Bagnardi

It is certainly not then - not in dreams - but when one is wide awake, in moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.
- Vladimir Nabokov ~ Vladimir Nabokov

At Gabriel College there was a very holy object on the high altar of the Oratory, covered with a black velvet cloth... At the height of the invocation the Intercessor lifted the cloth to reveal in the dimness a glass dome inside which there was something too distant to see, until he pulled a string attached to a shutter above, letting a ray of sunlight through to strike the dome exactly. Then it became clear: a little thing like a weathervane, with four sails black on one side and white on the other, began to whirl around as the light struck it. It illustrated a moral lesson, the Intercessor explained, for the black of ignorance fled from the light, whereas the wisdom of white rushed to embrace it.

{Alluding to William Crookes's radiometer.} ~ Philip Pullman

If it's ka it'll come like a wind, and your plans will stand before it no more than a barn before a cyclone ~ Stephen King

Can I have a glass of water?" Her voice was hoarse, probably from screaming. She'd always sounded like that after they'd-

He didn't just force the thought aside. He clubbed it unconscious, threw it into a crawl space and walled it up alive. ~ Jenny Trout

They have said that we owe allegiance to Safety, that he is our Red Cross who will provide us with ointment and bandages for our wounds and remove the foreign ideas the glass beads of fantasy the bent hairpins of unreason embedded in our minds. ~ Janet Frame

It was all right to be sad. It was all right to lament. It was all right to feel anger. But [is] not all right to run away. ~ Miyuki Miyabe

We are all glass soldiers. ~ Steven Galloway

Alice in Darkness

Forget tears. Chasing
white animals with timepieces
in this drug-trip landscape
can only lead to more of same.
Hedgehogs, playing cards, paintbrushes:
full of undisclosed danger.
Didn't your mother tell you
not to kiss strangers?
That Cheshire smile shouldn't fool you.
Pull your skirt down.
Your nails are growing so fast
you're hardly human.
Alice, fight your version of Bedlam
as long as you can.
Sleep the sweet dream away
from that gooey looking glass, or mushrooms,
or the fear of your own body.
Forget what the night tastes like.
Stop wondering through the shadows,
holding your neck out
for the slice of the axe. ~ Jeannine Hall Gailey

According to Montagne legend, the mountain has forever been the abode of giants. Long ago a traveling pair of sorcerers, husband and wife, scaled the cliff into the valley, and the woman cured the giants' chilblains with ointments and the gift of fire. In gratitude, the giants built Chateau de Montagne out of the living rock of Ancienne, and from that castle the couple founded the kingdom of Montagne, using their magic to shield the country and its people from harm. ~ Catherine Gilbert Murdock

When I was stuck in Colnora during the siege, your old friends helped get me out."

"The Diamond?"

Hadrian nodded. "Price arranged for me to slip away one night in exchange for delivering the letter. He preferred risking my neck rather than one of his boys."

"What did it say? Who was it from?"

Hadrian shrugged. "How would I know?"

"You didn't read it?" Royce asked incredulously.

"No, it was for Alric."

"Do you still have it?"

Hadrian shook his head. "Delivered it to the castle on the way in."

Royce dropped his face into his hands. "Sometimes, I just …" Royce shook his head. "Unbelievable."

"What's wrong?" Gwen asked as she joined them.

"Hadrian's an idiot," Royce replied, his voice muffled by his hands.

"I'm sure that's not true."

"Thank you, Gwen. See? At least she appreciates me. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, France enjoyed an upsurge of artistic flourishing that became known as La Belle Epoque. It was a time of change that heralded both art nouveau and post impressionism, when painters as diverse as Monet, Cezanne and Toulouse Lautrec worked. It was an age of extremes, when Proust and Anatole France were fashionable along with the notorious Monsieur Willy, Colette's husband. On the decorative arts, Mucha, Gallé and Lalique were enjoying success; and the theatre Lugné-Poe was introducing the grave works of Ibsen at the same time as Parisians were enjoying the spectacle of the can-can of Hortense Schneider. Paris was the crossroads of a new and many-faceted culture, a culture that was predominately feminine in form, for, above all, la belle Epoque was the age of women. Women dominated the cultural scene. On the one hand, there was Comtesse Greffulhe, the patron of Proust and Maeterlinck, who introduced greyhound racing into France; Winaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, for whom Stravinsky wrote Renard; Misia Sert, the discoverer of Chanel and Diaghilev's closest friend. On the other were the great dancers of the Moulin Rouge, immortalised by Toulouse lautrec - Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert, la Goulue; as well as such celebrated dramatic actresses as the great Sarah Bernhardt. It would not be possible to speak of La belle Epoque without the great courtesans who, in many ways, perfectly symbolize ~ Charles Castle

There's something I have learned from what I've lived:
lf you're to live something, live it to its fullest
Your beloved should fall exhausted from your kisses
You should fall exhausted from smelling a flower

One can watch the sky for hours
Can for hours watch the sea, a bird, a child
To live on earth is to mingle with it
Growing roots that cannot be eradicated

When you hug a friend you should hug him vigorously
You should fight with all your muscles, body, passion
And once you stretch out on the hot sand
You should rest like a grain of sand, a leaf, a stone

One should listen to all the beautiful music on earth
So as to fill all his being with sounds and songs
One should dive into life as if
Diving from a rock into an emerald sea

Distant lands should lure you, people you do not know
You should burn with desire to read all the books, to know all the lives
You should not exchange for anything the pleasure of drinking a glass of water
All the joys should fill you with the yearning to live

And you should live grief also, with honor, with all your being
For grief also, like joy, matures a person
Your blood should mingle with the great circulation of life
In your veins must circulate the eternal fresh blood of life

There is something I have learned from what I've lived:
If you're to live, live big, as if you ~ Ataol Behramoğlu

Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies. ~ Joseph Addison

There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and was Queen of much early Victorian song. It is sweet to protect her in the intervals of business, sweet to pay her honour when she has cooked our dinner well. But alas! the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war--a radiant crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding heavens. Men, declaring that she inspires them to it, move joyfully over the surface, having the most delightful meetings with other men, happy, not because they are masculine, but because they are alive. Before the show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal Woman, and go there as her transitory self. ~ E.M. Forster

He saw what they either couldn't see or couldn't allow themselves to see, and that only made him more pissed, because being less stupid than one's parents is repulsive, like taking a gulp from a glass of milk that you thought was orange juice. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer