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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

“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.
BETTY SMITH

Allow Anyone Around might People
Some people do crossword puzzles. I do books.
BETTY SMITH

Book Crosswords People
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
BETTY SMITH

Mother Son Wife
It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.
BETTY SMITH

Other School Unattainable Worlds
Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn.
BETTY SMITH

Beautiful Country Summer
She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again.
BETTY SMITH

Eye Long Years
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
As long as one can suffer, one is living….live and suffer until life is gone.
BETTY SMITH

Gone Long Suffering
Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
BETTY SMITH

Children Printed Reading Word
You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.
BETTY SMITH

Born Dies Rotten
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.
BETTY SMITH

Believing Start Starting Ugly World
She was surprised at how tiny it seemed now. She supposed the school was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.
BETTY SMITH

Eyes School Tiny
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
Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
BETTY SMITH

Book Intimate Friends Mood
…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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Betty Smith Quotes