black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

…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

Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.
BETTY SMITH

Giving Headache Wells
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
Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.
BETTY SMITH

Persons Rich Suffering
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
I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.
BETTY SMITH

Fake Horse People Wonderful
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
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
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.
BETTY SMITH

Charity Giving Strength Want
She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it
BETTY SMITH

Alive Oil Pain Scalding
What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.
BETTY SMITH

Between Grown Kept Stories Writing
Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.’
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Brooklyn Dear God
She told Papa about it. He made her stick out her tongue and he felt her wrist. He shook his head sadly and said, “You have a bad case, a very bad case.” “Of what?” “Growing up.
BETTY SMITH

Grow Up Papa Tongue
In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.
BETTY SMITH

Character Children Teaching
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
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.
BETTY SMITH

Children Heart Intolerance War
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

…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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…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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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