Quote collection
99 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"People always think that happiness is a faraway thing," thought Francie, "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."
"Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."
"Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time."
"I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding."
"I want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food."
"Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing."
"She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much."
"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."
"'Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.'"
"I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him."
"People looking up at her--at her smooth pretty vivacious face--had no way of knowing about the painfully articulated resolves formulating in her mind."
"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."
"If you love someone, you'd rather suffer the pain alone to spare them."
"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 to just be... safe. At least she knows she's living."
"It doesn't take long to write things of which you know nothing. When you write of actual things, it takes longer, because you have to live them first."
"But the penciled sheets did not seem like nor smell like the library book so she had given it up, consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked."
"The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child's life."
"Well, there's a little bit of man in every woman and a little bit of woman in every man."
"You won't die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life."
"Those were the Rommely women: Mary, the mother, Evy, Sissy, and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were made out of thin invisible steel."