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b5ef63b
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The tree man eulogized them by screaming, 'And now get the hell out of here with your tree, you lousy bastards.' Francie had heard swearing since she had heard words. Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made a kind of dialect. The phrases could mean many things according to the expression and tone used in saying them. So now, ..
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Betty Smith |
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3e91e8d
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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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ef8b7de
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Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life."
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Betty Smith |
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7c89737
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Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.
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Betty Smith |
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5c2a293
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Was that a bad lady, Papa?" Francis asked eagerly. "No." "But she looked bad." "There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people who are unlucky."
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Betty Smith |
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7b007d6
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Francie went over to stand at the great window from which she could see the East River twenty stories below. 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..
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Betty Smith |
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104aadc
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He was a baby once. He must have been sweet and clean and his mother kissed his little pink toes. Maybe when it thundered at night she came to his crib and fixed his blanket better and whispered that he mustn't be afraid, that mother was here. Then she picked him up and put her cheek on his head and said that he was her own sweet baby. He might have been a boy like my brother, running in and out of the house and slamming the door. And while..
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Betty Smith |
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7cc6207
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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.
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opening-lines
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Betty Smith |
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90e9c29
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A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the boot-strap 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 in his heart for those has left behind him in the cruel up climb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way.
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Betty Smith |
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2557131
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If I can fix every detail of this time in my mind, I can keep this moment always.
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Betty Smith |
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41e9777
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engaged," he said bitterly. "Everybody's engaged. Everybody in a small town is engaged or married or in trouble. There's nothing else to do in a small town. You go to school. You start walking home with a girl-- maybe for no other reason than that she lives out your way. You grow up. She invites you to parties at her home. You go to other parties-- eople ask you to bring her along; you're expected to take her home. Soon no one else takes he..
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Betty Smith |
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a1513c5
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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 ai..
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Betty Smith |
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115e4b0
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She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it
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describing-labor-pains
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Betty Smith |
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a75dca3
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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."
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Betty Smith |
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96d03e3
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You married him. There was something about him that caught your heart. Hang on to that and forget the rest.
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Betty Smith |
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c7c08b0
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Oh, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words! For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But, one day, she looked at a page and the word "mouse" had instantaneous meaning. She looked at the word, and a picture of a gray mouse scampered through her mind. She looked further and when she saw "horse," she heard him pawing the ground and saw t..
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Betty Smith |
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0b099b6
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Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?" "They're beanies." "They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn." "But I'm not in Brooklyn." "But you're still a Brooklynite." "I wouldn't want that to get around, Annie." "You don't mean that, Carl." "Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie." "Why?" "When in Rome do as the Romans do." "Do they call them beanies in Rome?" she asked artlessly. "This is the silliest conversation..."
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marriage
humor
joy-in-the-morning
betty-smith
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Betty Smith |
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7f113e9
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the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only - the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.
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Betty Smith |
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c1b1c88
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No, Katie never fumbled. When she used her beautifully shaped but worn-looking hands, she used them with surety, whether it was to put a broken flower into a tumbler of water with one true gesture, or to wring out a scrub cloth with one decisive motion--the right hand turning in, and the left out, simultaneously. When she spoke, she spoke truly with the plain right words. And her thoughts walked in a clear uncompromising line.
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Betty Smith |
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b3cd3ae
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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.
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Betty Smith |
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d8db4de
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She sat in the sunshine watching the life on the street and guarding within herself, her own mystery of life.
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motherhood
pregnancy
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Betty Smith |
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4c277db
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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."
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Betty Smith |
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0ac9953
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You'll never raise that one,' they told her. 'Her color ain't good. If the good Lord takes her, it will be for the best.'... Don't say that,' Katie held her baby tightly. 'It's not better to die. 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 grwoing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it str..
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Betty Smith |
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962d71d
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In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it happened. Tell the truth and write the story.
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Betty Smith |
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baf6582
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Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.
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Betty Smith |
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227f55f
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What is the difference between happiness and contentment?" "Well, happy is like when somebody gives you a big hunk of something wonderful and it's too big to hold. So you pull off a piece from time to time to hold in your hand. that's being contented. anyway, that's the way i look at it."
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Betty Smith |
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84dd552
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If you love someone, you'd rather suffer the pain alone to spare them.
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Betty Smith |
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f9ea03f
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Francie thought that all the books in the world were in that library and she had a plan about reading all the books in the world.
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Betty Smith |
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330fe99
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We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand ourselves.
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Betty Smith |
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5e60fc6
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Francie is smart, she thought. She must go to high school and maybe beyond that. She's a learner and she'll be somebody someday. But when she's educated, she will grow away from me. Why, she's growing away from me now. She does not love me the way the boy loves me. I feel her turn away from me. She does not understand me. All she understands is that I don't understand her. Maybe when she gets education, she will be ashamed of me - the way I..
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Betty Smith |
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34b2b16
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If what Granma Mary Rommely said is true, then it must be that no one ever dies, really. Papa is gone, but he's still here in many ways. He's here in Neeley who looks just like him and in Mama who knew him so long. He's here in his mother who began him and who is still living. Maybe I will have a boy some day who looks like Papa and has all of Papa's good without the drinking. And that boy will have a boy. And that boy will have a boy. It m..
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Betty Smith |
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1915095
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Laurie's going to have a mighty easy life all right. Annie Laurie McShane! She'll never have the hard times we had, will she? No. And she'll never have the fun we had, either. "Gosh! We did have fun, didn't we, Neeley?" Yeah! Poor Laurie, said Francie pityingly."
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Betty Smith |
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6469312
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Nothing was changing. She was the one who was changing.
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Betty Smith |
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a91668b
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Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!
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Betty Smith |
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5c448f6
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The child will grow up and find out things for herself. She will know that I lied. She will be disappointed." "That is what is called learning the truth."
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Betty Smith |
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3495b93
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Sissy had two great failings. She was a great lover and a great mother. She had so much of tenderness in her, so much of wanting to give of herself to whoever needed what she had, whether it was her money, her time, the clothes off her back, her pity, her understanding, her friendship or her companionship and love. She was mother to everything that came her way. She loved men, yes. She loved women too, and old people, and especially childre..
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humor
love
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Betty Smith |
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8ec76a6
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Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies.
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profanity
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Betty Smith |
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2fd1b84
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Our family used to be like this strong cup," thought Francie. "It was whole and sound and held things well. When papa died, the first crack came. And this fight tonight made another crack. Soon there will be so many cracks that the cup will break and we'll all be pieces instead of the whole thing together. I don't want this to happen, yet I'm deliberately making a deep crack."
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Betty Smith |
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56cf7c2
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From that time on, the world was hers for the reading.
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Betty Smith |
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550a444
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May I have this damaged bunch for two cents? Speak strongly and it shall be yours for two cents. That is a saved penny that you put in the star bank...Suffer the cold for an hour. Put a shawl around you. Sai, I am cold because I am saving to buy land. That hour will save you three cents' worth of coal... When you are alone at night, do not light the lamp. Sit in the darkness and dream awhile. Reckon out how much oil you saved and put its va..
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saving
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Betty Smith |
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ced90ab
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A woman's hair is her mystery.
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Betty Smith |
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4605832
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She got herself widowed, divorced, married, and pregnant - all in ten days' time.
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relationships
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Betty Smith |
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78cb030
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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."
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imagination
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Betty Smith |
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351c38b
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You know, a lot of people would think that these stories that you're making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. In the future, when something comes up, you exactly how it happened but the truth and the story. Then you won't get mixed up.
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Betty Smith |