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People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get.

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

Desk Parlor Sharpened Shining Weekend
As long as one can suffer, one is living….live and suffer until life is gone.
BETTY SMITH

Gone Long Suffering
You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.
BETTY SMITH

Born Dies Rotten
Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe.
BETTY SMITH

Believe Children Imagination
I came to a clear conclusion, and it is a universal one: To live, to struggle, to be in love with life–in love with all life holds, joyful or sorrowful–is fulfillment. The fullness of life is open to all of us.
BETTY SMITH

Fullness Life Love Struggle
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.
BETTY SMITH

Children Mother Strong
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.
BETTY SMITH

Firsts Long Nothing Writing
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

Other School Unattainable Worlds
A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
BETTY SMITH

Children Want Forget never
“I wouldn’t want that to get around, Annie.” “You don’t mean that, Carl.” “Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie.” “Why?” “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” “Do they call them beanies in Rome?” she asked artlessly. “This is the silliest conversation.
BETTY SMITH

Allow Anyone Around might People
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…
BETTY SMITH

Bitter Dearly Despairing God Loved Quarries Stumbling Weeping
Well, there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
BETTY SMITH

Littles Men Wells
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.
BETTY SMITH

Air Neighborhood Nice Sunday Took
Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb.
BETTY SMITH

Behind Compassion Cruel Rise
From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
BETTY SMITH

Lonely Reading World
I’ll not punish you for having an imagination.
BETTY SMITH

Imagination Person Punish

People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get.

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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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Popular Authors

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