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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
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Elisabeth Lillian Wehner
Seeing
Though
Look
Firsts
Everything
Looks
First
Perspective
Time
Wonder

More quotes by Betty Smith

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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
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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.
Betty Smith
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Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
Betty Smith
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The world was hers for the reading.
Betty Smith
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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.
Betty Smith
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It takes a lot of doing to die.
Betty Smith
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Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence. What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.
Betty Smith
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They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.
Betty Smith
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Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
Betty Smith
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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.
Betty Smith
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I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.
Betty Smith
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A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
Betty Smith
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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
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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.
Betty Smith
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'Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.'
Betty Smith
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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.
Betty Smith
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No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me.
Betty Smith
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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
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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
Betty Smith
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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