Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?” “They’re beanies.” “They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn.” “But I’m not in Brooklyn.” “But you’re still a Brooklynite.”
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
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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…
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I can never give a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ I don’t believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.
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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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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
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Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
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Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child’s life.
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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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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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But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
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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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You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.
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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.
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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 had to be dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background it’s flashing glory.
BETTY SMITH