Julia Scheeres > Quotes

“It took him a while to figure out that gaining an audience was not the same thing as gaining friends.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“If anything, the people who moved to Jonestown should be remembered as noble idealists. They wanted to create a better, more equitable, society. They wanted their kids to be free of violence and racism. They rejected sexist gender roles. They believed in a dream. How terribly they were betrayed.”
― Julia Scheeres, A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown

“One of the most popular genital surgeries is labia minora reduction. When a similar procedure is performed on healthy girls in some African countries as a coming-of-age rite to control their sexuality, Westerners denounce it as genital mutilation; in the U.S. of A., it's called cosmetic enhancement. But both procedures are based on misogynist notions of female genitalia as ugly, dirty, and shameful. And though American procedures are generally performed under vastly better conditions (with the benefit of, say, anesthesia and antibiotics), the postsurgical results can be similarly horrific, involving loss of sensation, chronic pain, and infection.”
― Julia Scheeres

“This here is: JESUS LAND”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land - Memoir 1St edition by Scheeres, Julia (2005) Paperback

“Life may not be fair, but when you have someone to believe in, life can be managed, and sometimes, even miraculous.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land

“Seems we can never just be brother and sister like in other families. Our whole lives, people have felt an urge to make up special names for what we are. at Lafayette Christian, we were the 'Oreo twins' or 'Kimberly and Arnold' after the characters on Diff'rent Strokes. And while those nicknames bugged us, they were certainly preferable to what they call us at Harrison”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“So we are drawn to graveyards, where we can be close to the dead and ponder their fate as well as our own.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“Today, few Americans born after 1980 are familiar with the Jonestown tragedy, although anyone with an Internet connection can listen to the haunting tape of the community’s mass extinction. And while the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” has entered the cultural lexicon, its reference to gullibility and blind faith is a slap in the face of the Jonestown residents who were goaded into dying by the lies of Jim Jones, and, especially insulting to the 304 murdered children. As the FBI files clearly document, the community devolved into a living hell from which there was no escape.”
― Julia Scheeres, A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown

“Mother's got romantic notions about toiling the land - or mostly, about her children toiling the land. And with fifteen acres, there's always something that needs toiling with.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“So much for the famous 'Hoosier hospitality.' When we moved to our new house, no one stopped by with strawberry rhubarb pie or warm wishes. Our neighbors must have taken one look at David and Jerome and locked their doors - and minds - against us”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“As a memoirist, it’s your job to impose order and meaning on the chaos of life.”
― Julia Scheeres

“We have a thing for bone yards, as we do for all things death-related. It's part of our religion, the topic of countless sermons: Where will YOU spend ETERNITY? THE AFTERLIFE: Endless BLISS or Endless TORTURE? We are haunted by these questions. If we die tomorrow, will we join the choir of angels or slow roast in Hell? We're not sure of the answer. So we are drawn to graveyards, where we can be close to the dead and ponder their fate as well as our own.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“The first time it happened, I laid there marveling at the beauty of it, wondering why God would forbid such bliss when He makes us endure so much misery.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“Many readers say they also feel like outcasts in their hometowns, oppressed by religionists, racists, homophobes, or other pea-brained busybodies. The advice I give them is this: If you feel like a misfit in the place where you were born, move somewhere else. I did. I now reside in the most progressive town in the country—Berkeley, California.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“The Program had taught me, but perhaps they’ll read them here: —To believe in people over dogmas. —To not turn the other cheek, but to master and subvert the rules of the game. —To strive to find small joys even in the bleakest of circumstances.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land

“They changed the subject before I could tell them the other important lessons The Program had taught me, but perhaps they’ll read them here: —To believe in people over dogmas. —To not turn the other cheek, but to master and subvert the rules of the game. —To strive to find small joys even in the bleakest of circumstances.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land

“she has forgotten the functions of humanity—laughing, dreaming, risking, adventuring, making experiments. She has put scalloped paper on all the shelves in the house, but she has left her own spirit as dusty and bare as the woodshed.24”
― Julia Scheeres, Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America's Most-Read Woman

“The only person who fails in life, she thought, is the person who doesn’t dare live it.15”
― Julia Scheeres, Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America's Most-Read Woman

“It was 1970, and America was scarred by racial violence. Civil rights leaders had been gunned down in the streets, and communities across the nation were smarting from race riots. My parents’ own state, Indiana, had once been a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan, and was still a haven for backwater bigots.”
― Julia Scheeres

“Why does God always have to make everything so difficult? I know we are put on earth to test our faith, but why can't He make our time here a little more enjoyable? Why does everything have to be such a cross?”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land a Memoir

“As we paint each other's nails Cinnamon Vixen, I consider telling her how bad things are at home. After she and Dan and Laura left for college, everything got worse. Mother's mood swings, Dad's violence, the name-calling at school.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“It's just after three o'clock when we hit County Road 50. The temperature has swelled past ninety and the sun scorches our backs as we swerve our bikes around pools of bubbling tar.”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir

“Neither of us uttered a word about what happened. We never do. But I can't smudge it from my mind. The farm boys' sneering red faces. The runt shaking the fence. The brown lump of spit tobacco. The anguish in David's eyes. They don't know the first thing about us; they just hate us because we're black”
― Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir