Betty Smith Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

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

  Betty Smith

  Men, Littles, Wells

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  7 Copy quote

• Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet. "Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss," concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. "I'll never make it, I guess." Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.

  Betty Smith

  Beautiful, Feet, Long

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Betty Smith

  Self, Too Much, Trouble

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  4 Copy quote

• But this tree in the yard-this tree that men chopped down...this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up it's stump-this tree lived! It lived! And nothing could destroy it.

  Betty Smith

  Men, Tree, Trying

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  10 Copy quote

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

  Betty Smith

  Mother, Son, Wife

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.

  Betty Smith

  Writing, Thinking, Should Have

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  4 Copy quote

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

  Betty Smith

  Children, Heartache, Lasts

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  6 Copy quote

• Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Saturday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books . . . books . . . books. . . .

  Betty Smith

  Wall, Flower, Book

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.19, Harper Collins

  6 Copy quote

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

  Betty Smith

  Rotten, Born, Dies

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.40, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

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

  Betty Smith

  Children, Cities, Important

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  7 Copy quote

• I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.

  Betty Smith

  Love, Happiness, Fall

  9 Copy quote

• There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.

  Betty Smith

  People, Unlucky, Bad People

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  30 Copy quote

• People looking up at her--at her smooth pretty vivacious face--had no way of knowing about the painfully articulated resolves formulating in her mind.

  Betty Smith

  Knowing, People, Mind

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  10 Copy quote

• ...the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only - the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

  Betty Smith

  Reading, Two, Soul

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  4 Copy quote

• It's come at last," she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn't enough food in the house you pretended that you weren't hungry so they could have more. In the cold of a winter's night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn't be cold. You'd kill anyone who tried to harm them - I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them from.

  Betty Smith

  Children, Grief, Winter

  4 Copy quote

• She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more...It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

  Betty Smith

  Brother, Father, Flower

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  15 Copy quote

• And you must tell the child the legends I told you - as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. You must tell the fairy tales of the old country. You must tell of those not of the earth who live forever in the hearts of the people.

  Betty Smith

  Mother, Country, Children

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence. What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.

  Betty Smith

  Liars, Writing, Years

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

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

  Betty Smith

  Forget, Time Passes, Let Me

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

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

  Betty Smith

  Parenting, Needs, Needed

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Betty Smith

  Pain, Oil, Alive

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.

  Betty Smith

  Lonely, Book, Reading

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  16 Copy quote

• Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!

  Betty Smith

  Wish, Wonderful, Young

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• This could be a whole life," she thought. "You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep so that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this.

  Betty Smith

  Sleep, Eight, People

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

  4 Copy quote

• Occasionally there is a moment in a person's life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment. For a split second he comes into a kind of cosmic understanding. For a trembling breath of time he knows all there is to know. He is loaned the gift the poet yearned for - seeing himself as others see him.

  Betty Smith

  Wisdom, Humility, Understanding

  4 Copy quote

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