From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.
BETTY SMITHWhat 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.
More Betty Smith Quotes
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A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
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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.
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Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life…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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“I wouldn’t want that to get around, Annie.” “You don’t mean that, Carl.” “Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie.” “Why?” “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” “Do they call them beanies in Rome?” she asked artlessly. “This is the silliest conversation.
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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
BETTY SMITH -
…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.
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Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
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If you love someone, you’d rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.
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Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret
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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.
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It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life – the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.
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Sometimes I say I don’t believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I’m a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession,
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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.
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It 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.
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Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.
BETTY SMITH







