Don't Forget to Smile Quotes

“Yes, it's hard to start seeing your mother as she is, hard to push aside all the resentment and anger that you may feel and see her as another woman. Hard, but worth every bit of the effort.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“Wags couldn't make it through the night without creeping over to Tory and whimpering that she had to use the ladies' room. So Tory would have to get out of bed, take her outside and down the stairs, and stand there in the middle of a chilly spring night, waiting for Wags to attend to herself.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“He didn't know how to change her.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“He knew why he was angry. Tory got angry when she cared; he got angry when he felt powerless. At Christmas, he had come to understand how people around here were basically powerless, how their cars and snowmobiles were substitutes for power. And that's why so many of them got angry easily, because they didn't have any control over what was happening to them.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“you also need rehearsal clothes and sitting-around-scaring-the-other-contestants clothes. I showed up in Atlantic City with eleven suitcases and twenty-three pairs of shoes.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“Listen, Joe, is your offer to oh and ah over my presents still good?" "Sure." "Then give me a minute to close up and we'll go upstairs." Go upstairs? Joe wasn't sure what to say. And when Joe wasn't sure what to say, he said nothing at all.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“You aren't feeling sorry for yourself over wrapping paper, are you? Yes, yes, she was. It was certainly possible to like your life 364 days a year, and then come Christmas, begin to wonder about it. But what could she do? Nobody came into a bar to hear a bartender's problems, did they?”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“She was down to three customers, all sitting at one table. There had never been more than a handful this evening, and Tory had known beforehand exactly who her Christmas Eve customers would be. They were all watching It's a Wonderful Life. It made her think of Joe. In the movie, Jimmy Stewart wanted to get on a train and leave the small town he had grown up in. He wanted to travel, to build things. But he never made it out. Instead, he stayed home, married, had a family—all the things Joe had been raised to do, all the things he wasn't doing now.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“beauty contests, she said seriously, they gave out scholarship awards. "It's the biggest scholarship program in the world—they told us that at the Miss Sullivan City Pageant. I won a few hundred dollars, but the people who do well in their state pageants and then in Atlantic City get really big ones." "Well, Tory did well; she came in third.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“Joe had long resented how American culture had taught him to want. There were so many things pictured in ads, displayed in store windows: stereo TVs, personality dolls, electronic board games, inboard-outboard motors, personalized bowling balls, graphite baitcasting rods. You were taught to want it all.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“Dad's Buick—what a great car it had been all these years—”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“Her safe was in the spare bedroom. She went in and knelt down in front of it. Sweatshirt and Joe followed. She noticed that Joe turned away as she started to spin the dial. Sweatshirt, however, kept staring. Oh, well, it wasn't likely that he would be able to remember the combination.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“You go first," Joe told Tory. "Wait in the parking lot for the rest of us." Tory and Sweatshirt set off, threading their way around the tables and the silent customers. Davy grinned at her when she got to the door. She went out into the parking lot, and as the other customers filed out—there were perhaps thirty of them—they formed an orderly double line in front of her. She felt a little like the last baritone in a church choir.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“What a mess this was. Robbers too stupid to ask for money, and a victim too stupid to pretend that she didn't have any.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“Tory was starting to feel a little foolish standing here with her hands in the air. It was like the whole bar had assembled to watch her nails dry. Why didn't someone say something?”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile

“Tory kept looking at the gun; it was quivering. The kid's hand was shaking; he was nervous. Oh, great. Just her luck, to be held up by a bunch of amateurs. Listen, we're all a bunch of amateurs too. My waitress stutters, my bartender can't hear, my janitor is an ex-junkie out on parole, and I used to twirl a baton for three hours a day. Give us a break.”
― Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Don't Forget to Smile