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"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."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 84

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The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to seen 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."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 466

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Katie heard the story. "It's come at last," she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn't enough food in the house you pretended that you weren't hungry so they could have more. In the cold of a winter's night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn't be cold. You'd kill anyone who tried to harm them... Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 453

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"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."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 448

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"Ai. I am eighty-five now and I feel that this is my last time of sickness. I wait for death with the courage I gained from living. I will not speak falsely and say to you: 'Do not grieve for me when I go.' I have loved my children and tried to be a good mother and it is right that my chldren grieve for me. But let your grief be gentle and brief. And let resignation creep into it. Know that I shall be happy. I shall see face to face the great saints I have loved all my life."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 434

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"Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry . . . have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 413

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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.

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith

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"There's no other place like it," Francie said.
"Like what?"
"Brooklyn. It's a magic city and it isn't real."
"It's just like any other place."
"It isn't! I go to New York every day and New York's not the same. I went to Bayonne once to see a girl from the office who was home, sick. And Bayonne isn't the same. It's mysterious here in Brooklyn. It's like - yes - like a dream. The houses and streets don't seem real. Neither do the people."
"They're real enough - the way they fight and holler at each other and the way they're poor, and dirty, too."
"But it's like a dream of being poor and fighting. They don't really feel these things. It's like it's all happening in a dream."
"Brooklyn is no different than any other place," said Neeley firmly. "It's only your imagination makes it different. But that's all right," he added magnanimously, "as long as it makes you feel so happy."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 400

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There was no different feeling about the train as it went over the Bridge. New York was disappointing. The buildings were higher and the crowds thicker; otherwise it was little different from Brooklyn. From now on, would all new things be disappointing, she wondered?
She had often studied the map of the United States and crossed its plains, mountains, deserts, and rivers in her imagination. And it had seemed a wonderful thing. Now she wondered whether she wouldn't be disappointed in that,to. Supposing, she thought, she was to walk across this great country. She'd start out at seven in the morning, say, and walk westward. She'd put one foot down in front of the other to cover distance, and, as she walked to the west, she'd be so busy with her feet and with the realization that her footsteps were part of a chain that had started in Brooklyn, that she might think nothing at all of the mountains, rivers, plains, and deserts she came upon. All she'd notice was that some things were strange because they reminded her of Brooklyn and that other things were strange because they were so different from Brooklyn. "I guess there is nothing new, then in the world," decided Francie unhappily. "If there is anything new or different, some part of it must be in Brooklyn and I must be used to it and wouldn't be able to notice it if I came across it." Like Alexander the Great, Francie grieved, being convinced that there were no new worlds to conquer.

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 370

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"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."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 326

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"...You want to live, don't you?"
"Yes. But I want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back and get more charity food."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 297

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"Mama never..." Suddenly the right word about mama came to Francie. "Mama never fumbles."
No, Katie never fumbled. When she used her beautifully-shaped but worn-looking hands, she used them with surety, whether it was to put a broken flower into a tumbler of water with one true gesture, or to wring out a scrub cloth with one decisive motion - the right hand turning in, and the left out, simultaneously. When she spoke she spoke truly with the plain right words. And her thoughts walked in a clear uncompromising line.

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 292

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"They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 159

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"Johnny knew he was doomed and accepted it. Katie wouldn't accept it. She started a new life where her old one left off. She exchanged her tenderness for capability. She gave up her dreams and took over hard realities in their place. Katie had a fierce desire fr 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."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 96

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"It's not better to die [than to live]. 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 because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way."

-A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith, pg. 93