A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Quotes

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

“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.”
― Betty Smith

“She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Anything you say may be used against you.”
― Betty Smith

“But in their secret hearts, each new that it wasn't all right and would never be all right between them again.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“The tears stood in her eyes.”
― Betty Smith

“Intolerance,' she wrote, pressing down hard on the pencil, "is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions, lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and to each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror and heart and soul breaking of the world."

She read the words over aloud. They sounded like words that came in a can; the freshness was cooked out of them. She closed the book and put it away.”
― Betty Smith

“The Nolans just couldn't get enough of life. They lived their own lives up to the hilt but that wasn't enough. They had to fill in on the lives of all the people they made contact with.”
― Betty Smith

“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 was 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.”
― Betty Smith