Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
School
Thing
Good
World
Unattainable
Beside
Showed
Worlds
Born

More quotes by Betty Smith

Image
Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
Betty Smith
Image
It's come at last, she thought, the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.
Betty Smith
Image
The world was hers for the reading.
Betty Smith
Image
Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
Betty Smith
Image
From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
Betty Smith
Image
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.
Betty Smith
Image
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.
Betty Smith
Image
And you must tell the child the legends I told you - as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. You must tell the fairy tales of the old country. You must tell of those not of the earth who live forever in the hearts of the people.
Betty Smith
Image
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.
Betty Smith
Image
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. 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
Image
But the penciled sheets did not seem like nor smell like the library book so she had given it up, consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked.
Betty Smith
Image
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.
Betty Smith
Image
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
Image
It takes a lot of doing to die.
Betty Smith
Image
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.
Betty Smith
Image
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
Image
It meant that she belonged some place. She was a Brooklyn girl with a Brooklyn name and a Brooklyn accent. She didn't want to change into a bit of this and a bit of that.
Betty Smith
Image
Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
Betty Smith
Image
Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
Betty Smith
Image
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
Betty Smith