And you must tell the child the legends I told you – as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. You must tell the fairy tales of the old country. You must tell of those not of the earth who live forever in the hearts of the people.
BETTY SMITHBooks became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
BETTY SMITH -
Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.
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Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.
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It’s come at last”, she thought, “the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.
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It takes a lot of doing to die.
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The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.
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Well, there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
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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.
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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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Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet.
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Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.
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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
BETTY SMITH