A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Quotes

“I don't know. 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 just to be ... safe. At least she knows she's living.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“You won't die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Oh time...time, pass so that I forget!


Oh time, Great Healer, pass over me and let me forget.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“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.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“It's a beautiful religion and I wish I understood it more. No, I don't want to understand it all. It's beautiful because it's always a mystery. Sometimes I say I don't believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I'm a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession, I get a heavy penance for something I couldn't help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I'll never be anything else.
Of course, I didn't ask to be born Catholic, no more than I asked to be born American. But I'm glad it turned out that I'm both these things.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Isn't hot coffee a wonderful thing? How did people get along before it was invented?”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn't adopt chemistry as a religion.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“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 you had it every day.
What had granma Mary Rommely said? "To 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.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“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 his mother scolded him she was thinking that maybe he'll be president some day. Then he was a young man, strong and happy. When he walked down the street, the girls smiled and turned to watch him. He smiled back and maybe he winked at the prettiest one. I guess he must have married and had children and they thought he was the most wonderful papa in the world the way he worked hard and bought them toys for Christmas. Now his children are getting old too, like him, and they have children and nobody wants the old man any more and they are waiting for him to die. But he don't want to die. He wants to keep living even though he's so old and there's nothing to be happy about anymore.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“It is a good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.”
― Betty Smith , A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“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.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“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 the 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 the sun glint on his glossy coat. The word "running" hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself. The barrier between the individual sound of each letter and the whole meaning of the word was removed and the printed word meant a thing at one quick glance. She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read!”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“When night draws back the curtain,
And pins it with a star,
Remember you are still my friend,
Though you may wander far”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“I'll not punish you for having an imagination.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“It 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.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Everything struggles to live.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“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, when Francie heard themselves called lousy bastards, she smiled tremulously at the kind man. She knew that he was really saying, 'Good-bye--God bless you.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“But this tree in the yard-this tree that men chopped down...this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up it's stump-this tree lived!

It lived! And nothing could destroy it.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“There is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard, unfamiliar things, there is here - hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. He many not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise - but only to his father's state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has the good heart and the way of working honestly at the right things.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“She had heard Papa sing so many songs about the heart; the heart that was breaking - was aching - was dancing -was heavy laden - that leaped for joy - that was heavy in sorrow - that turned over - that stood still. She really believed the heart actually did those things.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“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.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“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 the sun glint on his glossy coat. The word "running" hit her suddenly and she breathed hard as though running herself. The barrier between he individual sound of each letter and the whole meaning of the word was removed and the printed word meant a thing at one quick glance. She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read!

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 to adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“It was so simple that a flash of astonishment that felt like pain shot through her head. Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them ut of the grame and dirt.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“She was surprised at how tiny the school seemed now. She supposed it was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“You married him. There was something about him that caught your heart. Hang on to that and forget the rest.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“She sat in the sunshine watching the life on the street and guarding within herself, her own mystery of life.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“If I can fix every detail of this time in my mind, I can keep this moment always.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn