“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“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, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“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 strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“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, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“I hate all those flirty-birty games that women make up. Life's too short. If you ever find a man you love, don't waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, 'I love you. How about getting married?”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“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 to just be... safe. At least she knows she's living.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“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, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“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 understanding must be part of the holding.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“And always, there was the magic of learning things.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward.
A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn't tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“As 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, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed. ”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she lacked the courage to be otherwise.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“It's come at last," she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn't enough food in the house you pretended that you weren't hungry so they could have more. In the cold of a winter's night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn't be cold. You'd kill anyone who tried to harm them - I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them from.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“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.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”
― Betty Smith, quote from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith
Born place: in Brooklyn, NY, The United States
Born date December 15, 1896
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“Some people
Never find the right kind of love
you know, the kind that steals
your breath away.
Like diving into a snowmelt.
The kind that jolts your heart,
sets it beating apace.
An anxious hiccuping of hummingbirds wings.
The kind that makes every terrible minute apart feel like hours.
Days.
Years.
Some people flit from one insane possibility to the next.
Never experincing the connection of two people.
rocked by destiny.
Never knowing what it means to love someone else,
more than themselves.
More than life itself, or the promise of something better.
Beyond this world,
More even (forgive me!) than god.
Lucky me, I found the right kind of love.
With the wrong person.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Tricks
“Let the glossy spreads have their heart-stopping, head-turning kind of beauty. Give me the heart-filling beauty instead. Jolie laide, that's what I would choose. Flawed, we're truly interesting, truly memorable, and yes, truly beautiful.”
― Justina Chen, quote from North of Beautiful
“Did you have any goal other than reaching the crash site?”
“You make it sound as though I conspired to get myself landed on the planet.”
“And why would you do that?”
“That’s my point. We wanted nothing more than to get out of there.”
“Very well. What happened next?”
― Amie Kaufman, quote from These Broken Stars
“Why should Dickie want to come back to subways and taxis and starched collars and a nine-to- five job? Or even a chauffeured car and vacations in Florida and Maine? It wasn't as much fun as sailing a boat in old clothes and being answerable to nobody for the way”
― Patricia Highsmith, quote from The Talented Mr. Ripley
“For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life--food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power.”
― Barack Obama, quote from The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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Norvegų giriaBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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