Betty Smith Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Those were the Rommely women: Mary, the mother, Evy, Sissy, and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were made out of thin invisible steel.

  Betty Smith

  Daughter, Mother, Growing Up

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

  7 Copy quote

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

  Betty Smith

  Giving, Headache, Wells

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

  4 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

• 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

• 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

• It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.

  Betty Smith

  School, Other Worlds, Unattainable

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

  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

• 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

• If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is.

  Betty Smith

  Beautiful, Thinking, Tree

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

  4 Copy quote

• You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined. You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone's yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district. The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.

  Betty Smith

  Nice, Sunday, Air

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.6, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

• It was so simple that a flash of astonishment that felt like pain shot through her head. Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them ut of the grame and dirt.

  Betty Smith

  Pain, Simple, Differences

  4 Copy quote

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

  Betty Smith

  Book, Mood, Intimate Friends

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

  4 Copy quote

• There is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard, unfamiliar things, there is here - hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. He many not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise - but only to his father's state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has the good heart and the way of working honestly at the right things.

  Betty Smith

  Country, Teacher, Father

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

  4 Copy quote

• The library was a little old shaby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the cmbined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.

  Betty Smith

  Beautiful, Past, Doors

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.22, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

• She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again. Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was now was the way she wanted to remember it.

  Betty Smith

  Eye, Years, Long

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

  4 Copy quote

• I'll not punish you for having an imagination.

  Betty Smith

  Imagination

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

  5 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

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

  Betty Smith

  Suffering, Rich, Persons

  4 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

• She had heard Papa sing so many songs about the heart; the heart that was breaking - was aching - was dancing -was heavy laden - that leaped for joy - that was heavy in sorrow - that turned over - that stood still. She really believed the heart actually did those things.

  Betty Smith

  Song, Heart, Dancing

  4 Copy quote

• Mother, I am young. Mother, I am just eighteen. I am strong. I will work hard, Mother. But I do not want this child to grow up just to work hard. What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?" "The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret

  Betty Smith

  Mother, Strong, Children

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

  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

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