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 SMITHIt 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.
More Betty Smith Quotes
-
-
New York! I’ve always wanted to see it and now I’ve see it. It’s true what they say– it’s the most wonderful city in the world.
BETTY SMITH -
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 -
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.
BETTY SMITH -
All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live.
BETTY SMITH -
“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 -
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 -
If you love someone, you’d rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.
BETTY SMITH -
They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.
BETTY SMITH -
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.
BETTY SMITH -
Well, there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
BETTY SMITH -
Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn’t fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.
BETTY SMITH -
Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret
BETTY SMITH -
People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get.
BETTY SMITH -
Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.
BETTY SMITH -
I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you’d give your life to spare them from.
BETTY SMITH