A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Quotes

“She had born a child but two hours ago. She was so weak that she couldn't lift her head an inch from the pillow, yet it was she who comforted him and told him not to worry, that she would take care of him.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“So she learned ways of conserving bits of seconds. Long before the train ground to a stop at her station, she pushed her way to the door to be one of the first expelled when it slid open. Out of the train, she ran like a deer, circling the crowd to be the first up the stairs leading to the street. Walking to the office, she kept close to the buildings so she could turn corners sharply. She crossed streets kittycorner to save stepping off and on an extra pair of curbs. At the building, she shoved her way into the elevator even though the operator yelled "Car's full!" And all this maneuvering to arrive one minute before, instead of after nine!”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

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

“Maybe,” thought Francie, “she doesn’t love me as much as she loves Neeley. But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Maybe,” thought Francie, “she doesn’t love me as much as she loves Neely. But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“She knew from listening to her grandmother that old age was made up of such remembrances of youth.
But she didn’t want to recall things. She wanted to live things—or as a compromise, re-live rather than reminisce.
She decided to fix this time in her life exactly the way it was this instant. Perhaps that way she could hold on to it as a living thing and not have it become something called a memory.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“You betcha they’d live, thought Francie grimly. It takes a lot of doing to die.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“time, no matter what else it did, passed, and that the school boy of today was the voter of tomorrow.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Oh, to be a Chinaman, wished Francie, and have such a pretty toy to count on; oh, to eat all the lichee nuts she wanted and to know the mystery of the iron that was ever hot and yet never stood on a stove. Oh, to paint those symbols with a slight brush and a quick turn of the wrist and to make a clear black mark as fragile as a piece of a butterfly wing! That was the mystery of the Orient in Brooklyn.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“That is the book, then, and the book of Shakespeare. And every day you must read a page of each to your child—even though you yourself do not understand what is written down and cannot sound the words properly. You must do this that the child will grow up knowing of what is great—knowing that these tenements of Williamsburg are not the whole world.” “The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“There were two dozen tightly rolled, never-used silk umbrellas in that closet; prizes she had won. Flossie collected them for display the way an athlete collects cups. Francie felt happy looking at all the umbrellas. Poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Don't say that. It's not better to die. Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there from the 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.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“This could be a whole life," she thought. "You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep so that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to came to this. Of course, some of these girls will marry; marry men who have the same kind of life. What will they gain? They'll gain someone to hold conversations within the few hours at night between work and sleep.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“The baby Francie crowed with delight as her grandmother held up the cruet and the sun shone through it and made a small fat rainbow on the opposite wall. Mary smiled with the child and made the rainbow dance.
"Schön! Schön!" she said.
"Shame! Shame!" repeated Francie and held out her two hands.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“But she had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered “different.” She did not suffer too much.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“People think that happiness is a faraway thing, 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.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Боже мій, але ж нас можуть зробити щасливими сущі дрібниці: дах над головою, коли надворі дощ; чашка міцної кави, коли зморені; для чоловіків — добра сигара по обіді; для самотніх душ — гарна книжка; а ще — кохана людина поруч. Чому вони ніяк не візьмуть собі втямки: адже все це і є щастя.”
― Бетти Смит, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Те, що з тобою відбувається, розповідай правдиво, без прикрас, але для себе записуй, як, по-твоєму, все мало бути. Правду розповідай, а вигадки записуй.”
― Бетти Смит, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

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

“From now on, would all new things be disappointing, she wondered?”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Now, it’s work hard all the time or be a bum…no in-between. When I die, nobody will remember me for long. No one will say, ‘He was a man who loved his family and believed in the Union.’ All they will say is, ‘Too bad. But he was nothing but a drunk no matter which way you look at it.’ Yes, they’ll say that.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

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

“The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“It showed her that there were other worlds besides the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“School days went along. Some were made up of meanness, brutality, and heartbreak; others were bright and beautiful because of Miss Bernstone and Mr. Morton. And always, there was the magic of learning new things.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves. Papa and I were too different persons and we understood each other. Mama understands Neeley because he's different from her. I wish I was different in the way that Neeley is.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“She was 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 staggering home drunk.
She was all of these things and if something more that did not come from the Rommleys nor the Nolans, 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.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Willie tried to enlist in the army and was turned down; whereupon he threw his job, came home, announced that he was a failure, and went to bed. (...) He said he was going to stay in bed and never get up as long as he lived.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“He’d get lost if he tried to find his way back to New York from her neighborhood. Brooklyn was tricky that way. You had to live there in order to find your way about.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Run, run, you fool, before the waves of hurt start breaking.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn