Quote by Betty Smith

““You're not to cry for him,' ordered Mama. Her next words had no sense either. 'He's out of it now and maybe he's luckier than we are””

Betty Smith

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More by Betty Smith

“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 Sunday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower…

Betty Smith

“Several times that day, the name or thought of Papa had come up. And each time, Francie had felt a flash of tenderness instead of the old stab of pain. "Am I forgetting him?" she thought. "In time to come, will it be hard to remember anything about him? I guess it's like Granma Mary Rommely says: 'With time, passes…

Betty Smith

As long as one can suffer, one is living…live and suffer until life is gone.

Betty Smith

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“Sissy told them they were way behind the times; that midwives were things of the past. Besides, she informed them proudly, she had no say in the matter. Her Steve insisted on the doctor and the hospital. And that wasn’t all. Sissy was going to have a Jewish doctor! “Why, Sissy? Why?” asked her shocked sisters. “Because Jewish doctors are…

Betty Smith

“Why, Mrs McGarrity's all right. Mr McGarrity's all right, too. Only I guess they aren't all right to each other.”

Betty Smith

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“I drink because I don't stand a chance and I know it. I couldn't drive a truck and I couldn't get on the cops with my build. I got to sling beer and sing when I just want to sing. I drink because I got responsibilities that I can't handle...I am not a happy man. I got a wife and…

Betty Smith

“Pipe dreams, he thought to himself, even while he was telling her about his dream winnings. But oh, how wonderful, he thought, if everything…

Betty Smith

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“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," said Katie. Aw, somebody ought…

Betty Smith

It takes a lot of doing to die.

Betty Smith

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“She sat in the sunshine watching the life on the street and guarding within herself, her own mystery of life.”

Betty Smith

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...the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only - the something different from anyone else in the two families. 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…

Betty Smith