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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

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Betty Smith
Age: 75 †
Born: 1896
Born: December 15
Died: 1972
Died: January 17
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Elisabeth Lillian Wehner
Boiled
Oil
Alive
Dies
Free
Pain
Able
Like
Scalding

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It's come at last, she thought, the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.
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Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
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Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
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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.
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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.
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If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is.
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Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.
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In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.
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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.
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Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.
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They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.
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Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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I never listen to what people tell me and I can't read. The only way I know what is right and wrong is the way I feel about things. If I feel bad, it's wrong. If I feel good, it's right.
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Occasionally there is a moment in a person's life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment. For a split second he comes into a kind of cosmic understanding. For a trembling breath of time he knows all there is to know. He is loaned the gift the poet yearned for - seeing himself as others see him.
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It takes a lot of doing to die.
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No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me.
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Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
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There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.
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But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
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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.
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