Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.
BETTY SMITHYou 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.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.
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Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.
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She must start out believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.
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There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.
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Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn’t adopt chemistry as a religion.
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Well, there’s a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
BETTY SMITH -
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.
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If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can’t see how beautiful it really is.
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It was the last time she’d see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way.
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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.
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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 -
She had heard Papa sing so many songs about the heart; the heart that was breaking – was aching – was dancing -was heavy laden – that leaped for joy – that was heavy in sorrow – that turned over – that stood still. She really believed the heart actually did those things.
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Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.
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I hate all those flirty-birty games that women make up. Life’s too short. If you ever find a man you love, don’t waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, ‘I love you. How about getting married?
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We’ll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory…let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it.
BETTY SMITH