Betty Smith Quotes About Growing Up

Quotes about: Growing Up

• 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

  Strength, Strong, Children

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

• There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly . . . survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.

  Betty Smith

  Beautiful, Growing Up, Struggle

  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn epigraph (1943)

• 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 different world for her? How do I start?" "The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret

  Betty Smith

  Mother, Strong, Children

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

• Those were the Rommely women: Mary, the mother, Evy, Sissy, and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were made out of thin invisible steel.

  Betty Smith

  Daughter, Mother, Growing Up

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

• She told Papa about it. He made her stick out her tongue and he felt her wrist. He shook his head sadly and said, "You have a bad case, a very bad case." "Of what?" "Growing up.

  Betty Smith

  Growing Up, Papa, Tongue

  BETTY SMITH (1943). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”

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