Literary Birthday – 15 December – Betty Smith

Betty Smith was born 15 December 1896, and died 17 January 1972.

Seven Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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, you’ll 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.
3. Look at everything as though you were seeing it for the first time or the last time.
4. 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…
5. Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.
6. In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won’t get mixed up.
7. As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed.

Betty Smith was an American author. She is famous for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the American classic about a young girl’s coming-of-age at the turn of the 2oth century.

Source for Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Betty_Smith_1943.jpg

Photographer not credited, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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