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Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time.
Betty Smith
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Betty Smith
Age: 75 †
Born: 1896
Born: December 15
Died: 1972
Died: January 17
Author
Novelist
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Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Elisabeth Lillian Wehner
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First
Perspective
Time
Wonder
Seeing
Though
Look
Firsts
Everything
More quotes by Betty Smith
No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me.
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. 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
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
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
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
She had heard Papa sing so many songs about the heart the heart that was breaking - was aching - was dancing -was heavy laden - that leaped for joy - that was heavy in sorrow - that turned over - that stood still. She really believed the heart actually did those things.
Betty Smith
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
They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.
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
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
Intolerance is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions, lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror, and heart and soul breaking of the world.
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
Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
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
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
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
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
It's come at last, she thought, the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.
Betty Smith
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.
Betty Smith
