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"Why should I want to cheat you, Mrs. Nolan?"
"Why should anyone want to cheat anybody? But they do."

Mama turned my mattress today and found my diary and read it. <...> It's lucky I didn't have anything against Mama written down. If ever I have children I will not read their diaries as I believe that even a child is entitled to some privacy.

A small child has little idea of the future. Next week is as far ahead as his future stretches and the year between Christmas and Christmas again is an eternity.

There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.

Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.

After the doctor's outburst , Francie stood hanging her head. She was a dirty girl. That's what the doctor meant. He was talking more quietly now asking the nurse how that kind of people could survive; that it would be a better world if they were all sterilized and couldn't breed anymore. Did that mean he wanted her to die? Would he do something to make her die because her hands and arms were dirty from the mud pies?

A 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.

Sissy had two great failings. She was a great lover and a great mother. <...> 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.

The child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessery that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.

They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were made out of thin invisible steel.

Francie knew that Mama was a good woman. She knew. And Papa said so. Then why did she like her father better than her mother? Why did she? Papa was no good. He said so himself. But she liked Papa better.

Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee

"Neeley, do you think I'm good-looking?"
"Look! Why don't you make a novena to St. Theresa about it? I think a miracle might fix you up."

"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 deceitful. 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. "

She did not hate Miss Garnder anymore. She didn't like her, but she felt sorry for her. Miss Garnder had nothing in all the world excepting a sureness about how right she was.

Sissy wanted to adopt a child, but her John wouldn't hear of it.
"I'll not support another man's bastard, see?" was his way of putting it.
"Don't you like children, Lover?" she asked wheedlingly.
"Sure I like children. But they got to be my own and not some other bum's," he answered, unintentionally insulting himself.

Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well.

The Rommelys ran to women of strong personalities. The Nolans ran to weak and talented men. Johnny's family was dying out. The Nolan men grew handsomer, weaker and more beguiling with each generation. They had a way of falling in love but of ducking marriage. That was the main reason why they were dying out.