Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.

Is it not so that a son what is bad to his mother is bad to his wife?

Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?

But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.

She 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

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.

They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.