Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
BETTY SMITHFrom 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.
More Betty Smith Quotes
-
-
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 -
How much do they be paying you?” he asked mellowly. “The usual salary. A little more than they think I’m worth and a little less than I think I’m worth.
BETTY SMITH -
Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn’t happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?
BETTY SMITH -
“Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss,” concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. “I’ll never make it, I guess.” Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.
BETTY SMITH -
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 -
The difference between rich and poor”, said Francie, “is that the poor do everything with thier own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.
BETTY SMITH -
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 -
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 -
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.
BETTY SMITH -
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 -
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
BETTY SMITH -
Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.
BETTY SMITH -
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 -
From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
BETTY SMITH -
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