Quote collection
99 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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?"
"There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly . . . survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it."
"And always, there was the magic of learning things."
"Intolerance is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions, lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror, and heart and soul breaking of the world."
"Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?" "They're beanies." "They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn." "But I'm not in Brooklyn." "But you're still a Brooklynite." "I wouldn't want that to get around, Annie." "You don't mean that, Carl." "Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie." "Why?" "When in Rome do as the Romans do." "Do they call them beanies in Rome?" she asked artlessly. "This is the silliest conversation."
"It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache."
"As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed."
"Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Saturday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books . . . books . . . books. . . ."
"Someday you'll remember what I said and you'll thank me for it." Francie wished adults would stop telling her that. 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."
"From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again."
"They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted."
"I'll not punish you for having an imagination."
"How much do they be paying you?" he asked mellowly. "The usual salary. A little more than they think I'm worth and a little less than I think I'm worth."
"Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well."
"Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?"
"In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got."
"And that's where the whole trouble is. We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves."
"All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live."
"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."
"There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky."