Betty Smith Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.

  Betty Smith

  Men, Littles, Wells

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  7 Copy quote

• And that's where the whole trouble is. We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves.

  Betty Smith

  Self, Too Much, Trouble

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

  4 Copy quote

• But this tree in the yard-this tree that men chopped down...this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up it's stump-this tree lived! It lived! And nothing could destroy it.

  Betty Smith

  Men, Tree, Trying

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  10 Copy quote

• 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 mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.

  Betty Smith

  Writing, Thinking, Should Have

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

  4 Copy quote

• Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?

  Betty Smith

  Mother, Son, Wife

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.

  Betty Smith

  Children, Heartache, Lasts

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

  6 Copy quote

• 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 Saturday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books . . . books . . . books. . . .

  Betty Smith

  Wall, Flower, Book

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.19, Harper Collins

  6 Copy quote

• You won't die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.

  Betty Smith

  Rotten, Born, Dies

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.40, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

• I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.

  Betty Smith

  Love, Happiness, Fall

  9 Copy quote

• The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child's life.

  Betty Smith

  Children, Cities, Important

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

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Betty Smith

  Knowing, People, Mind

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

  10 Copy quote

• It was so simple that a flash of astonishment that felt like pain shot through her head. Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them ut of the grame and dirt.

  Betty Smith

  Pain, Simple, Differences

  4 Copy quote

• No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me.

  Betty Smith

  Needs, Want

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

  4 Copy quote

• 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 quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more...It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

  Betty Smith

  Brother, Father, Flower

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

  15 Copy quote

• 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 live forever in the hearts of the people.

  Betty Smith

  Mother, Country, Children

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence. What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.

  Betty Smith

  Liars, Writing, Years

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Betty Smith

  School, Other Worlds, Unattainable

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

  4 Copy quote

• She was surprised at how tiny it seemed now. She supposed the school was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.

  Betty Smith

  School, Eye, Tiny

  "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn".

  4 Copy quote

• There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.

  Betty Smith

  People, Unlucky, Bad People

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

  29 Copy quote

• New York! I've always wanted to see it and now I've see it. It's true what they say-- it's the most wonderful city in the world.

  Betty Smith

  New York, Cities, World

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it

  Betty Smith

  Pain, Oil, Alive

  BETTY SMITH (1947). “A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN MAGGIE NOW”

  4 Copy quote

• The library was a little old shaby 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 liked the cmbined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.

  Betty Smith

  Beautiful, Past, Doors

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.22, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

• It takes a lot of doing to die.

  Betty Smith

  Dies

  4 Copy quote

• A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.

  Betty Smith

  Children, Want, Never Forget

  4 Copy quote

• I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was wonderful.

  Betty Smith

  Fake People, Horse, Wonderful

  89 Copy quote

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