Betty Smith Quotes

Anything you say may be used against you.

But in their secret hearts, each new that it wasn't all right and would never be all right between them again.

The tears stood in her eyes.

But she didn't want to recall things. She wanted to live things - or as a compromise, re-live rather than reminisce.

Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?They're beanies.They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn.But I'm not in Brooklyn.But you're still a Brooklynite.I wouldn't want that to get around, Annie.You don...

One of Francie's favorite stores was the one which sold nothing but tea, coffee, and spices. It was an exciting place of rows of lacquered bins and strange, romantic, exotics odors. There were a dozen...

Francie had heard swearing since she had heard words. Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies;...

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...

Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Saturd...

It's come at last, she thought, the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn't enough food in the house you pretended that you weren't hungry so they coul...

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 li...

The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She lik...

She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter qu...

Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies.

May I have this damaged bunch for two cents? Speak strongly and it shall be yours for two cents. That is a saved penny that you put in the star bank...Suffer the cold for an hour. Put a shawl around y...

In his business, he observed human nature and came to certain conclusions about it. The conclusions lacked wisdom and originality; in fact, they were tiresome. But they were important to McGarrity bec...

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...

The world was hers for the reading.

Francie, huddled with other children of her kind, learned more that first day than she realized. She learned of the class system of a great Democracy.

Oh, and you must not forget the Kris Kringle. The child must believe in him until she reaches the age of six. I KNOW there is not Santa Claus.Yet you must teach the child that these things are so.Why?...