And that's where the whole trouble is. We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves.

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.

I'll not punish you for having an imagination.

The difference between rich and poor", said Francie, "is that the poor do everything with thier own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.

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

A child forgets a time of hunger but never forgets the aching want of other things.

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.