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I can never give a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ I don’t believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.

Betty Smith

It 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 SMITH

Firsts Long Nothing Writing
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
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
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
Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.
BETTY SMITH

Book Crosswords People
She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more…
BETTY SMITH

Bitter Dearly Despairing God Loved Quarries Stumbling Weeping
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.
BETTY SMITH

Different Fingerprints God One Puts Things
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
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 SMITH

Book Lonely Reading
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.
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Thinking Tree
…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
No. I don’t want to need anybody. I want someone to need me … I want someone to need me.
BETTY SMITH

Anybody Needs Someone Want
There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.
BETTY SMITH

Bad People Person Unlucky
Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants.
BETTY SMITH

Book Flower Wall
Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.
BETTY SMITH

Inspirational Thanksgiving Time

I can never give a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ I don’t believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.

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I can never give a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ I don’t believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.

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