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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

You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.
BETTY SMITH

Born Dies Rotten
This could be a whole life,” she thought. “You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep so that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this.
BETTY SMITH

Eight People Sleep
The world was hers for the reading.
BETTY SMITH

Book Inspirational Reading
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

Everything Eyes might Saw Something
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
Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
BETTY SMITH

Children Printed Reading Word
She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again.
BETTY SMITH

Eye Long Years
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
I 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 SMITH

Anything Else Penance Something
What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?” “The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read.
BETTY SMITH

Different Read Secret Start Writing
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
It’s a beautiful religion and I wish I understood it more. No, I don’t want to understand it all. It’s beautiful because it’s always a mystery.
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Believe Jesus More Mystery
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
She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard.
BETTY SMITH

Brother Father Flower
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
People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get.
BETTY SMITH

Coffee Rain Something Strong

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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