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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.

Betty Smith

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.
BETTY SMITH

Believe Children Imagination
The library was a little old shaby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in.
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Doors Library Past Place
Occasionally there is a moment in a person’s life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment.
BETTY SMITH

Humility Understanding Wisdom
And always, there was the magic of learning things.
BETTY SMITH

Always Learning Magic Things
I can never give a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ I don’t believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.
BETTY SMITH

Believe Giving Monosyillable Settled
It 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.
BETTY SMITH

Firsts Long Nothing Writing
From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
BETTY SMITH

Lonely Reading World
The world was hers for the reading.
BETTY SMITH

Book Inspirational Reading
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.
BETTY SMITH

Charity Giving Strength Want
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.
BETTY SMITH

Air Neighborhood Nice Sunday Took
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.
BETTY SMITH

Fake Horse People Wonderful
Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains – a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.
BETTY SMITH

Book Cigarette Contentment Little Read Strong Things
But the penciled sheets did not seem like nor smell like the library book so she had given it up, consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked.
BETTY SMITH

Book Hard Smell Work
Oh time…time, pass so that I forget! Oh time, Great Healer, pass over me and let me forget.
BETTY SMITH

Forget Let Passes Time
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.
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Country Summer
A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
BETTY SMITH

Children Want Forget never

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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