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As long as one can suffer, one is living….live and suffer until life is gone.

Betty Smith

Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence.
BETTY SMITH

Consequences Liars Writing Years
Intolerance is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions, lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror, and heart and soul breaking of the world.
BETTY SMITH

Children Heart Intolerance War
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.
BETTY SMITH

Fighting Pain Thinking
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
And that’s where the whole trouble is. We’re too much alike to understand each other because we don’t even understand our own selves.
BETTY SMITH

Much Self Too Trouble
Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.
BETTY SMITH

People Quarrels Two
Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere – be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar.
BETTY SMITH

Liar Ragged Sincere Truthful
Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb.
BETTY SMITH

Behind Compassion Cruel Rise
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
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
I know that’s what people say– you’ll get over it. I’d say it, too. But I know it’s not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won’t forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.
BETTY SMITH

Fall Happiness Love
In 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 SMITH

Blanket Cold Harm Night Winter
You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.
BETTY SMITH

Born Dies Rotten
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
BETTY SMITH

Mother Son Wife
How much do they be paying you?” he asked mellowly. “The usual salary. A little more than they think I’m worth and a little less than I think I’m worth.
BETTY SMITH

Salary Thinking Usual
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

Children Grief Winter
And always, there was the magic of learning things.
BETTY SMITH

Always Learning Magic Things
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 SMITH

Combined Fleshly Leather Mass Stamping
I’ll not punish you for having an imagination.
BETTY SMITH

Imagination Person Punish
Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.
BETTY SMITH

Book Crosswords People
But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
BETTY SMITH

Needed Needs Parenting
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
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 SMITH

Beatles Country Ever People Things
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

Lie Lying Mean Something Story
…the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only – the something different from anyone else in the two families.
BETTY SMITH

Living Observing Reading Something Soul Two
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
It’s come at last”, she thought, “the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.
BETTY SMITH

Children Heartache Lasts Longer

As long as one can suffer, one is living….live and suffer until life is gone.

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As long as one can suffer, one is living….live and suffer until life is gone.

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