“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.”

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

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.

I never listen to what people tell me and I can’t read. The only way I know what is right and wrong is the way I feel about things. If I feel bad, it’s wrong. If I feel good, it’s right.

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…

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

It was the last time she’d see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way.

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.

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn.

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

The difference between rich and poor”, said Francie, “is that the poor do everything with thier own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.

As long as one can suffer, one is living….live and suffer until life is gone.

I 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.

“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.

Of 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.

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

A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn’t tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been.

As a kid, I was always mad – just noticing the women at Thanksgiving, running around the kitchen, while the men were watching football. For one, I don’t want to cook, and for two, I hate football. I was stuck in the middle.

Be grateful simply for being alive. When you are grateful for life, pure and simple, your life becomes one you can be grateful for. That may strike you as circular or even backward logic, but your attitude really does have an effect on how things work out.

The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture, like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays – beyond their meaning – a factor in our economy.

I thought that all of the sacrifices and blessings of the whole history of mankind have devolved upon me. Thank you, God.

What does it mean when people applaud? Should I give ’em money? Say thank you? Lift my dress? The lack of applause – that I can respond to.

Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, ‘Thank God, I’m still alive.’ But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again.

When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength.

A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen.