Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence.
BETTY SMITHI 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.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get.
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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.
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I hate all those flirty-birty games that women make up. Life’s too short. If you ever find a man you love, don’t waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, ‘I love you. How about getting married?
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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.
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No. I don’t want to need anybody. I want someone to need me … I want someone to need me.
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She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.
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Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
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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.
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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