Christine

“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

“There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”
― Henry David Thoreau

“No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn