264 Quotes by Betty Smith

I want to live for something. I don’t want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.

If you love someone, you’d rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.

The pipe came from Sissy’s factory. The factory made a few rubber toys as a blind. It made its big profits from other rubber articles which were bought in whispers.

That is the book, then, and the book of Shakespeare. And every day you must read a page of each to your child – even though you yourself do not understand what is written down and cannot sound the words properly. You must do this that the child will grow up knowing of what is great – knowing that these tenements of Williamsburg are not the whole world.” “The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare.

Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn’t happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?

Growing up ruins everything.

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.

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.

The difference was that Flossie Gaddis was starved about men and Sissy was healthily hungry about them. And what a difference that made.