Flossie was always running after men and they were always running away from her. Francie's Aunt Sissy ran after men, too. But somehow they ran to meet her halfway.
Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them out of the grime and dirt.
Don't say that. It's not better to die. Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there from the grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing...
Before you die, you must own a bit of land—maybe with a house on it that your child or your children may inherit. Katie laughed. Me own land? A house? We’re lucky if we can pay our rent.
And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely's myst...
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..
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.
There were times though, especially towards the end of a long cold dark winter, when, no matter how hungry Francie was, nothing tasted good. That was big pickle time.
The difference between rich and poor, said Francie, is that the poor do everything with thier own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.
Spring came early that year and the sweet warm nights made her restless. She walked up and down the streets and through the park. And wherever she went, she saw a boy and a girl together; walking arm-...
She loved the library and was anxious to worship the lady in charge. But the librarian had other things on her mind. She hated children anyhow.
She had born a child but two hours ago. She was so weak that she couldn't lift her head an inch from the pillow, yet it was she who comforted him and told him not to worry, that she would take care of...
People looking up at her—at her smooth pretty vivacious face—had no way of knowing about the painfully articulated resolves formulating in her mind.
Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made a kind of dialect.
Money! Would that make it better for them? Yes, it would make it easy. But no, the money wouldn't be enough… That means there must be something bigger than money… An answer came to Katie. It was so si...
I think it's good that people like us can waste something once in a while and get the feeling of how it would be to have lots of money and not have to worry about scrounging.
Growing up spoiled a lot of things. It spoiled the nice game they had when there was nothing to eat in the house. When money gave out and food ran low, Katie and the children pretended they were explo...
Francie went over to stand at the great window from which she could see the East River twenty stories below. It was the last time she'd see the river from that window. The last time of anything has th...
Francie thought that all the books in the world were in that library and she had a plan about reading all the books in the world. She was reading a book a day in alphabetical order and not skipping th...
Francie nodded shyly. The girl brought an eraser close to the mesh. Francie poked a finger through to touch the vari-colored felt layers blended together by a film of powdered chalk. As she was about...