264 Quotes by 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.

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.

Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.

Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn’t adopt chemistry as a religion.

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...

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.

Oh, I want to hold it all!” she cried. “I want to hold the way the night is – cold without wind. And the way the stars are so near and shiny. I want to hold all of it tight until it hollers out, ‘Let me go! Let me go!

Run, run, you fool, before the waves of hurt start breaking.

You betcha they’d live, thought Francie grimly. It takes a lot of doing to die.