It was the last time she’d see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn’t held it tighter when you had it every day.

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.

Bad quarrels come when two people are wrong. Worse quarrels come when two people are right.

Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.

It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.

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?

I 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.