Betty Smith Quotes

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

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

The world was hers for the reading.

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

In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.

It is a good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch.

People always think that happiness is a faraway thing … something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up.

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.

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time.

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.

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

I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?

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

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

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.

And always, there was the magic of learning things.

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

Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be... safe. At least she knows she's living.

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

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

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

I'll not punish you for having an imagination.

How much do they be paying you?" he asked mellowly. "The usual salary. A little more than they think I'm worth and a little less than I think I'm worth.

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

Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn't adopt chemistry as a religion.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

She told Papa about it. He made her stick out her tongue and he felt her wrist. He shook his head sadly and said, "You have a bad case, a very bad case." "Of what?" "Growing up.

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

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

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

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.

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.

She was surprised at how tiny it seemed now. She supposed the school was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.

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

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.

It takes a lot of doing to die.