“Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss,” concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. “I’ll never make it, I guess.” Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.
BETTY SMITHBecause 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.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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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.
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She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it
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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
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I’ll not punish you for having an imagination.
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I want to live for something. I don’t want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.
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There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.
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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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A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
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Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.
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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.
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She had heard Papa sing so many songs about the heart; the heart that was breaking – was aching – was dancing -was heavy laden – that leaped for joy – that was heavy in sorrow – that turned over – that stood still. She really believed the heart actually did those things.
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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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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.
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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.
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Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence.
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Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
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Sometimes I say I don’t believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I’m a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession,
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What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.
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I get a heavy penance for something I couldn’t help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I’ll never be anything else.
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Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn’t adopt chemistry as a religion.
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I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.
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The world was hers for the reading.
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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 went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again.
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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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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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