"The Glass Castle"

The reader is still hopeful at this point:

• She kept going and dragged the screeching, chord-banging piano across the depot floor and right through the rear door, splintering its frame, too, then out into the backyard, where it came to rest next to a thorny bush.
• You could find great big bullfrogs that had stayed in the sun too long and were completely dried up and as light as a piece of paper.
• What was most important to us was who ran the fastest and whose daddy wasn't a wimp.
• There was no trees to speak of in Battle Mountain, but one corner of the dump had huge piles of railroad ties and rotting lumber that were great for climbing and carving your initials on. We called it the Woods.
• ... where the snapping yellow flames dissolved into an invisible shimmery heat that made the desert beyond seem to waver, like a mirage. Dad told us that zone was known in physics as the boundary between turbulence and order. "It's a place where no rules apply."
• "Kill the flies and you starve the cats," she said. Letting the flies live, in her view, was the same as buying cat food, only cheaper.
• I added, "I was hungry." Mom gave me a startled look. I'd broken one of our unspoken rules. We were always supposed to pretend our life was one long and incredibly fun adventure.
• "I'm a grown woman now," Mon said almost every morning. "Why can't I do what I want to do?" "Teaching is rewarding and fun," Lori said. "You'll grow to like it."
• She told me I should try to be nicer to Billy. "He doesn't have all the advantages you kids do," she said.
• The policeman told us that some of the neighbors had reported seeing kids shooting guns at each other.

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