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 wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this...
Betty SmithI want to live for something. I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food.
Betty SmithStichwörter: life
Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
Betty SmithA person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she lacked the courage to be otherwise.
Betty SmithWho 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," said Katie.
Aw, somebody ought to cut that tree down, the homely thing," said the midwife.
If there was only one tree like that in the whole world, you would think it was beautiful," said Katie. "But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is. Look at those children." She pointed to a swarm of dirty children playing in the gutter. "You could take any one of them and wash him good and dress him up and sit him in a fine house and you would think he was beautiful.
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 SmithStichwörter: reading books solitude literature lonliness
Man hätte meinen können, all die Unwillkommenen würden sich zusammentun und gemeinsam gegen die Macht auftreten, die sie nicht aufkommen lassen wollte. Aber dem war nicht so. Sie hassten einander ebensosehr, wie die Lehrerin sie hasste. Sie imitierten die [...] Lehrerin [...]. Es gab in jeder Klasse einen Unglücklichen, den die Lehrerin zum Sündenbock stempelte. Dieses arme Kind wurde unausgesetzt getadelt und gequält, an ihm reagierte sie ihre Unzufriedenheit mit sich selbst ab. Und kaum hatten die anderen Schüler erkannt, wen sich die Lehrerin zum Opfer gewählt hatte, wandten auch sie sich mit doppelter Grausamkeit und Herzlosigkeit gegen dieses arme Geschöpf. Dafür schmeichelten sie denjenigen, die bei der Lehrerin in Gunst standen. Vielleicht hatten sie irgendwie das Gefühl, dadurch dem Thron näher zu kommen.
Betty SmithThere had to be dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background it's flashing glory.
Betty SmithShe was surprised at how tiny the school seemed now. She supposed it was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.
Betty SmithShe 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 SmithStichwörter: a-tree-grows-in-brooklyn describing-labor-pains
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