A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

★★★★★

"From that time one, the world was hers for the reading.  She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends.  Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.  There was poetry for quiet companionship.  There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours.  There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to fee a closeness to someone should could read a biography.  On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived."

" 'People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,' thought Francie, 'something complicated and hard to get.  Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone - just to be with someone you love.  Those things make happiness.' "

"She was made up of more, too.  She was the books she read in the library.  She was the flower in the brown bowl.  Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard.  She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly.  She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping.  She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk.  She was all of those things and of something more...It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike."