264 Quotes by 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?

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.

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

The difference between rich and poor", said Francie, "is that the poor do everything with thier own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.

There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people all it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree that struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly . . . Survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.

You must teach the child of the signs that come to the women of our family when there is trouble and death to be.

Anything you say may be used against you.

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

The tears stood in her eyes.