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.
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 m...
But they’d live. You betcha they’d live, thought Francie grimly. It takes a lot of doing to die.
Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
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.
You won't die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.
What is the difference between happiness and contentment?Well, happy is like when somebody gives you a big hunk of something wonderful and it’s too big to hold. So you pull off a piece from time to ti...
Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
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 wire...
They had grown out of childhood in the last few days. Christmas as Christmas had passed unnoticed since their father had died on Christmas day. Neeley’s thirteenth birthday had been lost somewhere in...
The child will grow up and find out things for herself. She will know that I lied. She will be disappointed. That is what is called learning the truth.
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 hav...
She was a blameless sinless woman, yet she understood who how it was with people who sinned. Inflexibly rigid in her own moral conduct, she condoned weaknesses in others. She revered God and loved Jes...
She looked at the nurse. To Francie, all women were mamas like her own mother and Aunt Sissy and Aunt Evy. She thought the nurse might say something like:Maybe this little girl's mother works and didn...
People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, thought Francie, something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of stron...
Now his children are getting old too, like him, and they have children and nobody wants the old man any more and they are waiting for him to die. But he don't want to die. He wants to keep on living e...
No, I ain't big enough. I ain't big enough to do a thing like that. I gotta think of myself and my own kids.' He finally came to his conclusion.'Oh, what the h*ll! Them two kids is gotta live in this...
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...
Last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself
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...