47 quotes found
“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?”
“A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn't tell it like it was, you told it like yo...”
“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.”
“Francie, huddled with other children of her kind, learned more that first day than she realized. She learned of the class system of a great Democracy.”
“The world was hers for the reading.”
“The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She ...”
“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...”
“They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were all made out of thin invisible steel.”
“They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering Wes and soft fluttery voices. But they were all made out of thin invisible steel.”
“Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.”
“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, ...”
“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...”
“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, ...”
“In his business, he observed human nature and came to certain conclusions about it. The conclusions lacked wisdom and originality; in fact, they were tiresome. But they were important to McGarrity ...”
“...May I have this damaged bunch for two cents? Speak strongly and it shall be yours for two cents. That is a saved penny that you put in the star bank...Suffer the cold for an hour. Put a shawl ar...”
“It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.”
“Who wants to die? 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...”
“But she didn't want to recall things. She wanted to live things — or as a compromise, relive rather than reminisce.”
“Because the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start o...”
“Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.”
