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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

And you must tell the child the legends I told you – as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. You must tell the fairy tales of the old country. You must tell of those not of the earth who live forever in the hearts of the people.
BETTY SMITH

Children Country Invisible Legends Mother Steel
All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live.
BETTY SMITH

Kind Live Life
Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe.
BETTY SMITH

Believe Children Imagination
As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed.
BETTY SMITH

Book Candy Girl House Shadow
A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
BETTY SMITH

Children Want Forget never
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.
BETTY SMITH

Honorable Living Lost Sleep Something
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
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

Memories Song Thinking
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
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
Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.
BETTY SMITH

People Quarrels Two
I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you’d give your life to spare them from.
BETTY SMITH

Grief Halfway Innocence Space Walk
Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.’
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Brooklyn Dear God
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
Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn’t fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.
BETTY SMITH

Afternoon Beautiful Lovely Saturday Summer

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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