Betty Smith
Betty Smith
Betty Smith, née Elisabeth Wehner, was an American author...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth15 December 1896
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
children believe imagination
Because 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 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.
eye years long
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.
nice sunday air
You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined. You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone's yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district. The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.
people feel-good way
I never listen to what people tell me and I can't read. The only way I know what is right and wrong is the way I feel about things. If I feel bad, it's wrong. If I feel good, it's right.
dream real brooklyn
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?
wisdom humility understanding
Occasionally there is a moment in a person's life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment. For a split second he comes into a kind of cosmic understanding. For a trembling breath of time he knows all there is to know. He is loaned the gift the poet yearned for - seeing himself as others see him.
two people quarrels
Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.
mother son wife
Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?
children want never-forget
A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.
thinking littles usual
How much do they be paying you?" he asked mellowly. "The usual salary. A little more than they think I'm worth and a little less than I think I'm worth.
fall struggle sky
There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.
dies
It takes a lot of doing to die.
long suffering gone
As long as one can suffer, one is living....live and suffer until life is gone.
perspective looks firsts
Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time.