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 SMITHOf course, I didn’t ask to be born Catholic, no more than I asked to be born American. But I’m glad it turned out that I’m both these things.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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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 -
No. I don’t want to need anybody. I want someone to need me … I want someone to need me.
BETTY SMITH -
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 -
I’ll not punish you for having an imagination.
BETTY SMITH -
The world was hers for the reading.
BETTY SMITH -
As 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, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed.
BETTY SMITH -
There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.
BETTY SMITH -
Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants.
BETTY SMITH -
Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere – be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar.
BETTY SMITH -
The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.
BETTY SMITH -
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 -
A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
BETTY SMITH -
She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.
BETTY SMITH -
Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.
BETTY SMITH -
She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again.
BETTY SMITH







