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
compassion suffering anguish
They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.
believe giving dont-believe
I can never give a 'yes' or a 'no.' I don't believe everything in life can be settled by a monosyllable.
suffering rich persons
Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.
beautiful feet long
Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet. "Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss," concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. "I'll never make it, I guess." Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.
men littles wells
Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
life live-life kind
All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live.
liars writing years
Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence. What was important was that the attempt to write stories kept her straight on the dividing line between truth and fiction. If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.
hands differences rich
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.
writing long firsts
It doesn't take long to write things of which you know nothing. When you write of actual things, it takes longer, because you have to live them first.
girl names brooklyn
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.
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.