Betty Smith Quotes & Sayings

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 knew him so long. He's here in his mother who began him and who is still living. Maybe I will have a boy some day who looks like Papa and has all of Papa's good without the drinking. And that boy will have a boy. And that boy will have a boy. It might be there is no real death. — Betty Smith

If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar. — Betty Smith

She loved the library and was anxious to worship the lady in charge. But the librarian had other things on her mind. She hated children anyhow. — Betty Smith

I think it's good that people like us can waste something once in a while and get the feeling of how it would be to have lots of money and not have to worry about scrounging. — Betty Smith

No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts ... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people. — Betty Smith

Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. — Betty Smith

She wanted to own a book so badly and she had thought the copying would do it. But the pencilled sheets did not seem like nor smell like the library book so she had given it up, consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked. — Betty Smith

One of Francie's favorite stores was the one which sold nothing but tea, coffee, and spices. It was an exciting place of rows of lacquered bins and strange, romantic, exotics odors. There were a dozen scarlet coffee bins with adventurous words written across the front in black China ink: Brazil! Argentine! Turkish! Java! Mixed Blend! The tea was in smaller bins: beautiful bins with sloping covers. They read: Oolong! Formosa! Orange Pekoe! Black China! Flowering Almond! Jasmine! Irish Tea! The spices were in miniature bins behind the counter. Their names marches in a row across the shelves: cinnamon
cloves
ginger
all-spice
ball nutmeg
curry
peppercorns
sage
thyme
marjoram. — Betty Smith

Spring came early that year and the sweet warm nights made her restless. She walked up and down the streets and through the park. And wherever she went, she saw a boy and a girl together; walking arm-in-arm, sitting on a park bench with their arms around each other, standing closely and in silence in a vestibule. Everyone in the world but Francie had a sweetheart or a friend. She seemed to be the only lonely one in Brooklyn. — Betty Smith

No. I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me. — Betty Smith

Mother! Katie remembered. She had called her own mother "mama" until the day she had told her that she was going to marry Johnny. She had said, "Mother, I'm going to marry ... " She had never said "mama" after that. She had finished growing up when she stopped calling her mother "mama." Now Francie ... — Betty Smith

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

But in their secret hearts, each new that it wasn't all right and would never be all right between them again. — Betty Smith

She had heard Papa sing so many songs about the heart; the heart that was breaking - was aching - was dancing -was heavy laden - that leaped for joy - that was heavy in sorrow - that turned over - that stood still. She really believed the heart actually did those things. — Betty Smith

A free country? they asked. You should live so long. What's free about it, they reasoned, when the law forces you to educate your children and then endangers their lives to get them into school? — Betty Smith

I believe in the Lord, Jesus Christ, and His Mother, Holy Mary. Jesus was a living baby once. He went bare-footed like we do in the summer. I saw a picture where He was a boy and had no shoes on. And when He was a man, He went fishing, like papa did once. And they could hurt Him, too, like they couldn't hurt God. Jesus wouldn't go around punishing people. He knew about people. So I will always believe in Jesus Chirst.'
They made the sign of the cross as Catholics do when mentioning Jesus' name. Then she put her hand on Neely's knee and spoke in a whisper.
'Neely, I wouldn't tell anybody but you, but I don't believe in God anymore.'
'I want to go home,' said Neely. He was shivering. — Betty Smith

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

She adapted herself to the split-second rhythm of the New Yorker going to and from work. Getting to the office was a nervous ordeal. If she arrived one minute before nine, she was a free person. If she arrived one minute after, she worried because that made her the logical scapegoat of the boss if he happened to be in a bad mood that day. — Betty Smith

She had born a child but two hours ago. She was so weak that she couldn't lift her head an inch from the pillow, yet it was she who comforted him and told him not to worry, that she would take care of him. — Betty Smith

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

Our family used to be like this strong cup," thought Francie. "It was whole and sound and held things well. When papa died, the first crack came. And this fight tonight made another crack. Soon there will be so many cracks that the cup will break and we'll all be pieces instead of the whole thing together. I don't want this to happen, yet I'm deliberately making a deep crack. — Betty Smith

I will not speak falsely and say to you: 'Do not grieve for me when I go.' I have loved my children and tried to be a good mother and it is right that my children grieve for me. But let your grief be gentle and brief. And let resignation creep into it. Know that I shall be happy. I shall see face to face the great saints I have loved all my life. — Betty Smith

Eyes changed after they looked at new things. — Betty Smith

In his business, he observed human nature and came to certain conclusions about it. The conclusions lacked wisdom and originality; in fact, they were tiresome. But they were important to McGarrity because he had figured them out for himself. In the first years of their marriage, he had tried to tell Mae about these conclusions, but all she said was, "I can imagine." Sometimes she varied by saying, "I can just imagine." Gradually then, because he could not share his inner self with her, he lost the power of being a husband to her, and she was unfaithful to him. — Betty Smith

Francie nodded shyly. The girl brought an eraser close to the mesh. Francie poked a finger through to touch the vari-colored felt layers blended together by a film of powdered chalk. As she was about to touch this soft beautifulness, the little girl snatched it away and spat full in Francie's face. Francie closed her eyes tightly to keep the hurt bitter tears from spilling out. The other girl stood there curiously, waiting for the tears. When none came, she taunted: "Why don't you bust out crying, you dockle? Want I should spit in your face again?" Francie turned and went down into the cellar and sat in the dark a long time waiting until the waves of hurt stopped breaking over her. It was the first of many disillusionments that were to come as her capacity to feel things grew. She never liked blackboard erasers after that. — Betty Smith

So she learned ways of conserving bits of seconds. Long before the train ground to a stop at her station, she pushed her way to the door to be one of the first expelled when it slid open. Out of the train, she ran like a deer, circling the crowd to be the first up the stairs leading to the street. Walking to the office, she kept close to the buildings so she could turn corners sharply. She crossed streets kittycorner to save stepping off and on an extra pair of curbs. At the building, she shoved her way into the elevator even though the operator yelled "Car's full!" And all this maneuvering to arrive one minute before, instead of after nine! — Betty Smith

I can never give a 'yes' or a 'no.' I don't believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable. — Betty Smith

Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife? — Betty Smith

It was the last time she'd see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day. — Betty Smith

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.. — Betty Smith

The world was hers for the reading — Betty Smith

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

Oi! By me is so big the mouth, so my foot always goes in. — Betty Smith

Francie, Neeley, and mama had a very fine meal. Each had a thick slice of the "tongue," two pieces of sweet-smelling rye bread spread with unsalted butter, a sugar bun apiece and a mug of strong hot coffee with a teaspoon of sweetened condensed milk on the side. — Betty Smith

They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted. — Betty Smith

The Nolan's just could't get enough of life. They lived their own lives up to the hilt but that wasn't enough. They had to fill in on the lives of all the people they made contact with. — Betty Smith

But oh, how wonderful, he thought, if everything you talked about could come true! — Betty Smith

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

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 wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this ... — Betty Smith

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

Anything you say may be used against you. — Betty Smith

It meant that she belonged some place. She was a Brooklyn girl with a Brooklyn name and a Brooklyn accent. She didn't want to change into a bit of this and a bit of that. — Betty Smith

Do you hear that, Francie? You're in college! 'oh gosh, I feel sick. — Betty Smith

But he refused to answer when addressed in English and forbade the speaking of English in his home. His daughters understood very little German. (Their mother insisted that the girls speak only English in the home. She reasoned that the less they understood German, the less they would find out about the cruelty of their father.) Consequently, the four daughters grew up having little communion with their father. He never spoke to them except to curse them. His Gott verdammte came to be regarded as hello and good-bye. When very angry, he'd call the object of his temper, Du Russe! This he considered his most obscene expletive. He hated Austria. He hated America. Most of all he hated Russia. He had never been to that country and had never laid eyes on a Russian. No one understood his hatred of that dimly known country and its vaguely known people. This was the man who was Francie's maternal grandfather. She hated him the way his daughters hated him. * — Betty Smith

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

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

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

Oh, to be a Chinaman, wished Francie, and have such a pretty toy to count on; oh, to eat all the lichee nuts she wanted and to know the mystery of the iron that was ever hot and yet never stood on a stove. Oh, to paint those symbols with a slight brush and a quick turn of the wrist and to make a clear black mark as fragile as a piece of a butterfly wing! That was the mystery of the Orient in Brooklyn. — Betty Smith

Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing. — Betty Smith

Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words. — Betty Smith

After Election, the politicians forgot their promises and enjoyed an earned rest until New Year, when they started work on the next Election. — Betty Smith

No, Katie never fumbled. When she used her beautifully shaped but worn-looking hands, she used them with surety, whether it was to put a broken flower into a tumbler of water with one true gesture, or to wring out a scrub cloth with one decisive motion
the right hand turning in, and the left out, simultaneously. When she spoke, she spoke truly with the plain right words. And her thoughts walked in a clear uncompromising line. — Betty Smith

When I grow up and know that I am going to have a baby, I will remember to walk proud and slow.. — Betty Smith

Katie heard the story. '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 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 ... 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. — Betty Smith

Now the Irish women always look so ashamed. They know they can never make a Jesus. It will be just another Mick. — Betty Smith

It there's one thing certain, it's that we all have to get old someday. So get used to the idea as quickly as you can. — Betty Smith

Engaged," he said bitterly. "Everybody's engaged. Everybody in a small town is engaged or married or in trouble. There's nothing else to do in a small town. You go to school. You start walking home with a girl
maybe for no other reason than that she lives out your way. You grow up. She invites you to parties at her home. You go to other parties
eople ask you to bring her along; you're expected to take her home. Soon no one else takes her out. Everybody thinks she's your girl and then ... well, if you don't take her around, you feel like a heel. And then, because there's nothing else to do, you marry. And it works out all right if she's a decent girl (and most of the time she is) and you're a halfway decent fellow. No great passion but a kind of affectionate contentment. And then children come along and you give them the great love you kind of miss in each other. And the children gain in the long run. — Betty Smith

She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again. Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was now was the way she wanted to remember it. — Betty Smith

Somehow during their aimless but oh-so-significant conversation with its delicious pauses and thrilling undercurrents of emotion, they came to know that they loved each other passionately. — Betty Smith

Nothing was changing. She was the one who was changing. — Betty Smith

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

But she didn't want to recall things. She wanted to live things - or as a compromise, relive rather than reminisce. — Betty Smith

You must learn to take a joke, Francie, otherwise life will be pretty hard on you. — Betty Smith

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

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

Poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things. — Betty Smith

It takes a lot of doing to die. — Betty Smith

Seems like I'm the most dissatisfied person in the whole world. Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful! — 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 or some leaves or berries always in it and books ... books..books. — Betty Smith

Oh time ... time, pass so that I forget!
Oh time, Great Healer, pass over me and let me forget. — Betty Smith

From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again. — Betty Smith

When the strong healthy boy, howling at the indignity of the birth process, was put to her breast, she felt a wild tenderness for him, The other baby, Francis, in the crib next her bed, began to whimper. Katie had a flash of contempt for the weak child she had borne a year ago, when she compared her to this new handsome son. She was quickly ashamed of hr contempt. She knew it wasn't the little girl's fault. "I must watch myself carefully," she thought. "I am going to love this boy more than the girl but I mustn't ever let her know. It is wrong to love one child more than the other but this is something that I cannot help. — Betty Smith

Why can't they," she thought bitterly, "just give the doll away without saying I am poor and she is rich? Why couldn't they just give it away without all the talking about it? — Betty Smith

Was that a bad lady, Papa?" Francis asked eagerly.
"No."
"But she looked bad."
"There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people who are unlucky. — Betty Smith

It's only your imagination makes it different. But that's all right, as long as it makes you feel so happy. — Betty Smith

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

Isn't hot coffee a wonderful thing? How did people get along before it was invented? — Betty Smith

You married him. There was something about him that caught your heart. Hang on to that and forget the rest. — Betty Smith

Her time has come," answered Miss Lizzie. "That's why I didn't marry Harvey - long ago when he asked me. I was afraid of 'that'. So afraid." "I don't know," Miss Lizzie said. "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 just to be safe." She waited until the next scream died away. "At least she knows she's living. — Betty Smith

She was the books she read in the library. — Betty Smith

... the fabric of family, the limits of love, the loss of innocence and the birth of knowledge. — Betty Smith

Everything struggles to live. — Betty Smith

Oh well, this is only temporary. Everything will be better someday. I'll make it better. After all, I'm young yet. — Betty Smith

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

Maybe they knew their own gift of imagination colored too rosily the poverty and brutality of their lives and made them able to endure it. — Betty Smith

The tree man eulogized them by screaming, 'And now get the hell out of here with your tree, you lousy bastards.'
Francie had heard swearing since she had heard words. Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made a kind of dialect. The phrases could mean many things according to the expression and tone used in saying them. So now, when Francie heard themselves called lousy bastards, she smiled tremulously at the kind man. She knew that he was really saying, 'Good-bye
God bless you. — Betty Smith

Joanna. Remember Joanna. Francie could never forget her. From that time on, remembering the stoning women, she hated women. She feared them for their devious ways, she mistrusted their instincts. She began to hate them for this disloyalty and their cruelty toward each other. Of all the stone-throwers, not one had dared to speak a word for the girl for fear that she would be tarred with Joanna's brush ... Most women had one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. — Betty Smith

The tears stood in her eyes. — Betty Smith

There was a special Nolan idea about the coffee. It was their one great luxury. Mama made a big potful each morning and reheated it for dinner and supper and it got stronger as the day wore on. It was an awful lot of water and very little coffee but mama put a lump of chicory in it which made it taste strong and bitter. Each one was allowed three cups a day with milk. Other times you could help yourself to a cup of black coffee anytime you felt like it. Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.
Neeley and Francie loved coffee but seldom drank it. Today, as usual, Neeley let his coffee stand black and ate his condensed milk spread on bread. He sipped a little of the black coffee for the sake of formality. Mama poured out Francie's coffee and put the milk in it even though she knew that the child wouldn't drink it. — Betty Smith

And she doesn't have to worry about me, either. I don't need to drink to get drunk. I can get drunk on things like the tulip - and this night. — Betty Smith

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 have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them. — Betty Smith

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. It is a good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character. — Betty Smith

An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire escape could imagine that she was living in a tree. — Betty Smith

Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right. — Betty Smith

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

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

Then I've been drunk, too," admitted Francie.
"On beer?"
"No. Last spring, in McCarren's Park, I saw a tulip for the first time in my life. — Betty Smith

Last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself — Betty Smith

Francie always remembered what the kind teacher told her. 'You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you're making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. 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 ever got. Truth and fancy were so mixed up in her mind
as they are in the mind of every lonely child
that she didn't know which was which. — Betty Smith

All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life it's in him to live. — Betty Smith