Betty Smith Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Betty Smith on Wise Famous Quotes.

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 ...