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?

Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be... safe. At least she knows she's living.

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.

It's a beautiful religion and I wish I understood it more. No, I don't want to understand it all. It's beautiful because it's always a mystery. Sometimes I say I don't believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I'm a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession, I get a heavy penance for something I couldn't help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I'll never be anything else. Of course, I didn't ask to be born Catholic, no more than I asked to be born American. But I'm glad it turned out that I'm both these things.

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

She was surprised at how tiny it seemed now. She supposed the school was just as big as it had ever been only her eyes had grown used to looking at bigger things.

All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live.