Dani > Dani's Quotes

“I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.”
― Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

“Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner's love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother's love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant.”
― bell hooks

“Occasionally there is a moment in a person's life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment. For a split second he comes into a kind of cosmic understanding. For a trembling breath of time he knows all there is to know. He is loaned the gift the poet yearned for - seeing himself as others see him.”
― Betty Smith, Tomorrow Will Be Better

“Oh well, this is only temporary. Everything will be better someday. I'll make it better. After all, I'm young yet.”
― Betty Smith, Tomorrow Will Be Better

“Hope ever urges on, and tells us tomorrow will be better.”
― Betty Smith, Tomorrow Will Be Better

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

“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

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

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

“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

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

“She was made up of 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 stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more...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

“And always, there was the magic of learning things.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Somewhere, out in the world, are the people who touched us, or loved us, or ran from us. In that way we will live on. If you go to the places we have been, you might meet someone who passed us once in a corridor but forgot us before we were even gone. We are in the back of hundreds of people's photographs - moving, talking, blurring into the background of a picture two strangers have framed on their living room mantelpiece. And in that way, we will live on too. But it isn't enough. It isn't enough to have been a particle in the great extant of existence. I want, we want, more. We want for people to know us, to know our story, to know who we are and who we will be. And after we've gone, to know who we were.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“The cruelty of strangers never usually upsets me, but the kindness of strangers is oddly devastating.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“Do you know," she said slowly, "that the stars that we see the clearest are already dead?"
"Well, that's depressing." I took my hand from hers.
"No," she said gently, linking her arm through mine, "it's not depressing, it's beautiful. They've been gone for who knows how long, but we can still see them. They live on."
They live on.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“And in the quiet, as she carefully outlined her yellow star in gold, I got this feeling I've never felt with anyone. That I had all the time in the world. I didn't have to rush to tell her anything, we could just be.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“And I will be forever changed by the people I have met and their bravery, their courage and their light.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“I really am fine,” Humphrey said in the corridor. “I just got old by accident.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“answers don’t always come in the form of words.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“Somewhere, out in the world, are the people who touched us, or loved us, or ran from us. In that way we will live on. If you go to the places we have been, you might meet someone who passed us once in a corridor but forgot us before we were even gone. We are in the back of hundreds of people’s photographs—moving, talking, blurring into the background of a picture two strangers have framed on their living room mantelpiece. And in that way, we will live on too. But it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to have been a particle in the great extant of existence. I want, we want, more. We want for people to know us, to know our story, to know who we are and who we will be. And after we’ve gone, to know who we were.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“It isn’t enough to have been a particle in the great extant of existence. I want, we want, more. We want for people to know us, to know our story, to know who we are and who we will be. And after we’ve gone, to know who we were.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“Lenni, wherever you are. Whatever wonderful world you find yourself in now. Wherever that fiery heart is, that quick wit, that disabling charm. Know that I love you. For the brief lifetime that we knew each other, I loved you like you were my very own daughter. You found an old woman worthy of your immense friendship and for that I am forever in your debt. So I have to say thank you.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“I was so afraid of you. Of how much I missed you and how much I loved you and how much I failed you.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“And I was aware, as I sometimes am, of the Earth moving. That the Earth was rotating and pulling us forwards, and millions of milliseconds were flying by, and that this moment was precious. More precious than my time with Humphrey, which was unlimited and so of much lower value. Time with Meena always passed faster than it should have and it was always more fleeting.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“Above us in the unending skies the planets were aligning, but we could never quite align, Meena and I.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“There were so many things I wanted to say to her. I wanted to ask her why she could be so free in so many ways but one. Tell her that she needn't be afraid of me. Explain that I felt for her in a way that I never felt for Johnny, because the way I felt for her wasn't born of obligation. It was completely and wholly voluntary. And that I could love her for ever, if only she would let me.
But no words came out.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“She could stay there among the stars.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot