Betty Smith Quotes

It's only your imagination makes it different. But that's all right, as long as it makes you feel so happy.

... the fabric of family, the limits of love, the loss of innocence and the birth of knowledge.

Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.

Eyes changed after they looked at new things.

Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?

but her body was fuller.

Forgiveness," said Mary Rommely, "is a gift of high value. Yet its cost nothing.

The something which had been a future was now a present and would become a past.

It doesn't take long to write things of which you know nothing. When you write of actual things, it takes longer, because you have to live them first.

They lived comfortably and it was a good life they had ... happy and full of small adventures.
And they were so young and loved each other so much.

Francie, huddled with other children of her kind, learned more that first day than she realized. She learned of the class system of a great Democracy.

Johnny was one for taking notions. He'd take a notion that life was too much for him and start drinking heavier to forget it.

She was the books she read in the library.

If I can fix every detail of this time in my mind, I can keep this moment always.

The tears stood in her eyes.

She read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy..

Time, no matter what else it did, passed, and that the school boy of today was the voter of tomorrow.

All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life it's in him to live.

It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.

The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child's life.

And always, there was the magic of learning things.

He was willing to exchange soul-destroying suspicion for heartbreaking reality. Accordingly,

Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies.

She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.

She loved the library and was anxious to worship the lady in charge. But the librarian had other things on her mind. She hated children anyhow.

Neeley came home and he and Francie were sent out for the weekend meat. This was an important ritual and called for detail instructions by mama.

I'm glad I got you!

Maybe they knew their own gift of imagination colored too rosily the poverty and brutality of their lives and made them able to endure it.

We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand ourselves.

A woman's hair is her mystery.

After Election, the politicians forgot their promises and enjoyed an earned rest until New Year, when they started work on the next Election.

Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.

She grieved a while and her grief changed her.

Oh well, this is only temporary. Everything will be better someday. I'll make it better. After all, I'm young yet.

A head pain caught her between the eyes at the taking in of such a wonderful sight. It was something to be remembered all her life

When I grow up and know that I am going to have a baby, I will remember to walk proud and slow..

Poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things.

She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it

We'll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory ... let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it.

Then I've been drunk, too," admitted Francie.
"On beer?"
"No. Last spring, in McCarren's Park, I saw a tulip for the first time in my life.

If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.

I'll not punish you for having an imagination.

It there's one thing certain, it's that we all have to get old someday. So get used to the idea as quickly as you can.

He was so graceful and handsome, so loving, so full of the grandness of just living, that Katie, watching him, thought she would die of being happy.

An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire escape could imagine that she was living in a tree.

No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me.

Now the Irish women always look so ashamed. They know they can never make a Jesus. It will be just another Mick.

Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.

There had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory.

As long as one can suffer, one is living ... live and suffer until life is gone.

Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.

And that's where the whole trouble is. We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves.

Katie! Don't nag! All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the life it's in him to live.

I can never give a 'yes' or a 'no.' I don't believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.

Nothing was changing. She was the one who was changing.

Anything you say may be used against you.

Oh time ... time, pass so that I forget!
Oh time, Great Healer, pass over me and let me forget.

Seems like I'm the most dissatisfied person in the whole world. Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!

I wait for death with the courage I gained from living.

But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.

Mama never fumbles." No,

If you love someone, you'd rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.

You must learn to take a joke, Francie, otherwise life will be pretty hard on you.

When night draws back the curtain,
And pins it with a star,
Remember you are still my friend,
Though you may wander far

Oi! By me is so big the mouth, so my foot always goes in.

Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.

They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.

And she doesn't have to worry about me, either. I don't need to drink to get drunk. I can get drunk on things like the tulip - and this night.

Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.

Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.

Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them out of the grime and dirt.

Francie thought that all the books in the world were in that library and she had a plan about reading all the books in the world.

Now my wandering days are over. It will be bliss to settle down. Bliss. There's a word, now. Bliss to love and to be loved.

But in their secret hearts, each new that it wasn't all right and would never be all right between them again.

Last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself

The world was hers for the reading

A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.

Everything struggles to live.

I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either first time or last time.

You won't die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.

They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering Wes and soft fluttery voices. But they were all made out of thin invisible steel.

He talked about democracy and good citizenship and about a good world where everyone did the best he could for the common good of all.

You must teach the child of the signs that come to the women of our family when there is trouble and death to be.

I want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.

It takes a lot of doing to die.

Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.

But oh, how wonderful, he thought, if everything you talked about could come true!

The difference was that Flossie Gaddis was starved about men and Sissy was healthily hungry about them. And what a difference that made.

Tell the truth and write the story.

Do you hear that, Francie? You're in college! 'oh gosh, I feel sick.

You married him. There was something about him that caught your heart. Hang on to that and forget the rest.

Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.

From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.

Well' Francie decided, 'I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life - and nothing else but'.

Isn't hot coffee a wonderful thing? How did people get along before it was invented?

New York! I've always wanted to see it and now I've see it. It's true what they say
it's the most wonderful city in the world.

But she didn't want to recall things. She wanted to live things - or as a compromise, relive rather than reminisce.

I don't know. I don't know anything, really. I just feel. And when the feeling is strong enough, then I just say I know. But I don't ...