a tree grows in brooklyn.

This is a rough draft, but I wanted to write down some of the quotes in this book that I enjoyed. Unfortunately, I am at the library and must give the book back. I'll write about it later.

"She'd take a block of paper and a stick of charcoal and sketch the poorest, ugliest kid in the room. And when the picture was finished, you didn't see the dirt or the meanness, you saw the glory of innocence and the poignancy of a baby growing up too soon. Oh, it was grand."\


"Oh, how I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!"

"But it was just as well...Ther had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory."


"Sissy had two great failings. SHe was a great lover and a great mother. SHe had so much of tenderness in her, so much of wanting to give of herself to whoever needed what she had, whether it was her money, her time, the clothes off her back, her pity, her understanding, her friendship or her companionship and love. She was mother to everything that came her way. She loved men, yes. She loved women too, and old people and especially children. How she loved children! She lvoed the down-and-outers. She wanted to make everybody happy....She loved all the scratching curs on the street and wept for the scavenging cats who slunk around Brooklyn corners with their sides swollen looking for a while in which they might bring forth their young....She picked bouquets of white clover in the lots believing they were the most beautiful flowers God had ever made. Once she saw a mouse in her room. The next night she set out a tiny box for him with cheese crumbs in it. Yes, she listened to everybody's troubles but no one listened to hers. But that was right because Sissy was a giver and never a taker."

"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 deitful. 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 litle piece of living is ever lost."

..."A girl- in spite of bright red lipstick and grown-up clothes and a lot of knowledge picked up here and there-- who was yet tremulously innocent; a girl who had come face to face with some of the evil of the world and most of its' hardships, and yet had remained curiously untouched by the world."



"Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words!"

"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."