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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
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Betty Smith
Age: 75 †
Born: 1896
Born: December 15
Died: 1972
Died: January 17
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Brooklyn
New York
Elisabeth Lillian Wehner
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More quotes by Betty Smith
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
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
Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
Betty Smith
We'll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory...let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it.
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
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
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
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
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.
Betty Smith
No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.
Betty Smith
There had to be dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background it's flashing glory.
Betty Smith
The world was hers for the reading.
Betty Smith
Someday you'll remember what I said and you'll thank me for it. Francie wished adults would stop telling her that. Already the load of thanks in the future was weighing her down. She figured she'd have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them.
Betty Smith
No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me.
Betty Smith
Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well.
Betty Smith
Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
Betty Smith
But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
Betty Smith
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
