More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Honesty is casting bright light on your own experience; truth is casting it on the experiences of all,
She was richer because she had something to waste.
THE LIBRARY WAS A LITTLE OLD SHABBY PLACE. FRANCIE THOUGHT it was beautiful.
To know that he was away was almost as good as getting a birthday present.
The difference was that Flossie Gaddis was starved about men and Sissy was healthily hungry about them. And what a difference that made.
Poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things.
Inflexibly rigid in her own moral conduct, she condoned weaknesses in others.
He hated the Germans, he hated Americans, he hated the Russians, but he just couldn’t stand the Irish.
“The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret.”
“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.
own a bit of land is better; a bit of land that we may hand down to our children…that will raise us up on the face of the earth.”
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.”
She grew an answering hardness against her mother and this hardness, paradoxically enough, brought them a little closer together because it made them more alike.
Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer.
This was a miracle that you could pray for all your life and it would never come to pass.
Francie sat on a chair and was surprised that it felt the same as it had in Lorimer Street. She felt different. Why didn’t the chair feel different?
The inside of the store had a clean, warm but fragile scent, like odorless flowers in a hot room.
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.
She waited in a perspiration of impatience.
was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.
Beer flowed like a Brooklyn gutter after a rainstorm.
They think they’re mighty lucky that they’re living and that it’s Christmas again. They can’t see that we live on a dirty street in a dirty house among people who aren’t much good.
Growing up spoiled a lot of things.
It takes a lot of doing to die.
“Well, tell us why girls are different from boys.” Mama thought for a while. “The main difference is that a little girl sits down when she goes to the bathroom and a little boy stands up.”
As for Johnny, they fined him five dollars for violating the Sullivan Law—having a gun without a permit. And, oh, yes! The watchman’s young wife eventually ran away with an Italian a little nearer her own age.
“Mama never fumbles.”
“Why, Mrs. McGarrity’s all right. Mr. McGarrity’s all right, too. Only I guess they aren’t all right to each other.”
“What is beauty?” asked the child. “I can think of no better definition than Keats’: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’”
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.
I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.”
When night draws back the curtain, And pins it with a star, Remember I am still your friend, Though you may wander far.
and when I turned my first pay over to my mother, the tears stood in her eyes. Yes, sir, the tears stood in her eyes.”
All she’d notice was that some things were strange because they reminded her of Brooklyn and that other things were strange because they were so different from Brooklyn.
“Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistress,” concluded Francie.
“Our family used to be like a 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 a whole thing together.
the great Bridge that threw itself like a sigh across the East River and was lost…lost…on the other shore.
And so he sat in the front room evenings. He blew into the harmonica, strummed the guitar, thumped the great drum, and clashed the brass cymbals. And he grieved because he was a failure.
And he asked for her whole life as simply as he’d ask for a date. And she promised away her whole life as simply as she’d offer a hand in greeting or farewell.
Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you’d give your life to spare them.”
The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself.
Eyes changed after they looked at new things.
