Mother, I am young. Mother, I am just eighteen. I am strong. I will work hard, Mother. But I do not want this child to grow up just to work hard. What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a diffe...
Katie! Don't nag! All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the life it's in him to live.
It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.
If you love someone, you'd rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.
If what Granma Mary Rommely said is true, then it must be that no one ever dies, really. Papa is gone, but he's still here in many ways. He's here in Neeley who looks just like him and in Mama who kne...
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.
I need someone, thought Francie desperately. I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the under...
I don’t know, Miss Lizzie said. Sometimes I think it’s better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than just to be…safe. She waited until...
Going home in the trolley, Francie held the shoebox in her lap because Mama had no lap now. Francie thought deep thoughts during her ride. 'If what Granma Mary Rommely said is true, then it must be th...
Forgiveness, said Mary Rommely, is a gift of high value. Yet its cost nothing.
For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But one day, she looked at a page and the word mouse had instantaneous mean...
Filth, filth, filth, from morning to night. I know they're poor but they could wash. Water is free and soap is cheap. Just look at that arm, nurse.'The nurse looked and clucked in horror. Francie stoo...
. . you’ll always come out all right – no matter what. You’re like me that way.’ And that’s where the whole trouble is, thought Francie. We’re too much alike to understand each other because we don’...
Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
Time, no matter what else it did, passed, and that the school boy of today was the voter of tomorrow.
Engaged, he said bitterly. Everybody's engaged. Everybody in a small town is engaged or married or in trouble. There's nothing else to do in a small town. You go to school. You start walking home with...
When the strong healthy boy, howling at the indignity of the birth process, was put to her breast, she felt a wild tenderness for him, The other baby, Francis, in the crib next her bed, began to whimp...
Well' Francie decided, 'I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life - and nothing else but'.
There were two dozen tightly rolled, never-used silk umbrellas in that closet; prizes she had won. Flossie collected them for display the way an athlete collects cups. Francie felt happy looking at al...
There is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard, unfamiliar things, there is here - hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his fath...