But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
BETTY SMITHBut she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
BETTY SMITH“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 SMITHA child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
BETTY SMITHI 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.
BETTY SMITHIt is a good thing to learn the truth one’s self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch.
BETTY SMITHThe 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 SMITHPrairie 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 SMITHBooks became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
BETTY SMITHFrancie 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.
BETTY SMITHIn the cold of a winter’s night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn’t be cold. You’d kill anyone who tried to harm the.
BETTY SMITHShe 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
BETTY SMITHIt takes a lot of doing to die.
BETTY SMITHThe world was hers for the reading.
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.
BETTY SMITHAnd 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 SMITHMother, 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