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76cbd42
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The world was hers for the reading.
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reading
feminist
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Betty Smith |
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139996d
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I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.
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love
lost-love
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Betty Smith |
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a6a17c2
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Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little pi..
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life
inspirational
growing-up
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Betty Smith |
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1c8e5bf
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Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little pi..
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life
inspirational
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Betty Smith |
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f8596bc
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From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she firs..
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solitude
literature
reading
lonliness
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Betty Smith |
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838dac4
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People always think that happiness is a faraway thing," thought Francie, "something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness."
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Betty Smith |
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b4b7b63
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She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.
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loneliness
suffering
comfort
inspirational
girls
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Betty Smith |
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577b92f
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She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more...It was what God or whatever is His equi..
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Betty Smith |
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285b341
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Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
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Betty Smith |
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327e3c9
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Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.
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wonder
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Betty Smith |
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c04270a
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I hate all those flirty-birty games that women make up. Life's too short. If you ever find a man you love, don't waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, 'I love you. How about getting married?
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Betty Smith |
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8f9311d
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Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "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 by 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. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of ..
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imagination
life
inspirational
believe
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Betty Smith |
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0be7cc4
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Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "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 by 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. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of ..
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imagination
life
inspirational
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Betty Smith |
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6352305
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Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be... safe. At least she knows she's living.
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Betty Smith |
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8bdff97
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Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.
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strength
strength-through-adversity
survival
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Betty Smith |
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8adb8d7
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Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
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Betty Smith |
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94f7acc
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If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is.
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Betty Smith |
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e5654f8
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I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.
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Betty Smith |
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796300e
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It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache."
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motherhood
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Betty Smith |
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111ff4a
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Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.
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Betty Smith |
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c264e62
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And always, there was the magic of learning things.
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Betty Smith |
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533e139
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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.
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writing
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Betty Smith |
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d717357
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As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed.
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Betty Smith |
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ad7fd71
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In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.
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Betty Smith |
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675513f
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But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.
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love
parenting
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Betty Smith |
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8270262
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They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.
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Betty Smith |
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f9e45c5
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It's come at last," she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn't enough food in the house you pretended that you weren't hungry so they could have more. In the cold of a winter's night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn't be cold. You'd kill anyone who tried to harm them - I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out ..
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winter
futility
maternal
nihilism
mother
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Betty Smith |
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f7487f6
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A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in the face of tha..
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Betty Smith |
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fbbd87c
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There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.
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Betty Smith |
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a64080d
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We'll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory...let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it.
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Betty Smith |
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b0492ed
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Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well.
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Betty Smith |
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2cee4a6
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From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.
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solitude
words
literature
reading
lonliness
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Betty Smith |
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dfb373d
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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.
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Betty Smith |
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75f19f8
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It was the last time she'd see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day.
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Betty Smith |
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ec9541e
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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. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. 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 to..
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Betty Smith |
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a9d6abb
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Someday you'll remember what I said and you'll thank me for it." Francie wished adults would stop telling her that. Already the load of thanks in the future was weighing her down. She figured she'd have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them."
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humor
betty-smith
thanks
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Betty Smith |
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a3a57f8
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Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman... whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip..
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wisdom
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Betty Smith |
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331ffaa
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The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.
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library
reading
feelings
books
smell
mood
read
experience
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Betty Smith |
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061fd0b
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Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.
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Betty Smith |
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9c2a951
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Well' Francie decided, 'I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life - and nothing else but'.
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Betty Smith |
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355571f
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Intolerance is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions, lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror, and heart and soul breaking of the world.
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Betty Smith |
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acbb1ac
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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.
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Betty Smith |
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80741b3
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From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again.
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Betty Smith |
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1022ed5
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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.
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Betty Smith |