Betty Smith Quotes

I hate all those flirty-birty games that women make up. Life’s too short. If you ever find a man you love, don’t waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, ‘I love you. How about getting married?

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

But this tree in the yard-this tree that men chopped down…this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up it’s stump-this tree lived! It lived! And nothing could destroy it.

Occasionally there is a moment in a person’s life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment.

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.

Sometimes I say I don’t believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I’m a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession,

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

But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.

What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?” “The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read.

All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live.