Anzia Yezierska Quotes

When I only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts.

I saw that "success," "failure," "poverty", "riches," were price tags, money values of the market place which had mesmerized and sidetracked me for years.

For a little while when we were lovers I breathed the air from the high places where love comes from, and I can't no more come down.

I felt I could turn the earth upside down with my littlest finger. I wanted to dance, to fly in the air and kiss the sun and stars with my singing heart. I, alone with myself, was enjoying myself for the first time as with grandest company.

I want knowledge. How, like a starved thing in the dark, I'm driven to reach for it.

There is justice nowhere for a fool. A fool they whip even in the Holy Temple.

Hell, is trying to do what you can't do, trying to be what you're not

The stars in their infinite peace seemed to pour their healing light into me. I thought of captives in prison, the sick and the suffering from the beginning of time who had looked to these stars for strength. What was my little sorrow to the centuries of pain which those stars had watched? So near they seemed, so compassionate. My bitter hurt seemed to grow small and drop away. If I must go on alone, I should still have silence and the high stars to walk with me.

Beloved, Dearest One: How I long to shout to the world our happiness. I feel that you and I are the only two people alive in the world - the only people that know the secret meaning of existence. I have no diamond rings, no gifts of love that other lovers have for their beloved. My poetry is all I have to offer you. And so I dedicate my collected verses, 'Poems of Poverty,' to you, beloved. Morris.

Back in my own place, the sky burst in upon me from the window and I was reminded of a long-forgotten passage in War and Peace. Napoleon, walking through the battlefield, sees a dying soldier and, holding up the flag of France, declaims: “Do you know, my noble hero, that you have given your life for your country?” “Please! Please!” the soldier cries. “You are blotting out the sky.

Only millionaires can be alone in America. You know the old saying: Money lost, nothing lost. Hope lost, all is lost. The less money I have, the more I live on hope. And hope is the only reality here on earth. It's hope that makes people build cities and span bridges and send ships from one end of the earth to another. Even dying, man plants his hope on the next world. It says in the Torah, only through a man has a woman an existence. Only through a man can a woman enter Heaven. In America, women don't need men to boss them. For the first time in my life I saw what a luxury it was for a poor girl to want to be alone in a room. Even in our worst poverty we sat around the table, together, like people. I never knew that there were people glad enough of life to celebrate the day they were born. The routine with which I kept clean my precious privacy, my beautiful aloneness, was all sacred to me. I had achieved that marvelous thing, "a place for everything and everything in its place", which the teacher preached to me so hopelessly as a child in Hester Street. I had it ingrained in me from my father, this exalted reverence for the teacher.

Nevertheless,” he insisted, “I’ve found wonderful material for my new book in all this. I think I’ve got a new angle on the social types of your East Side.” An icy band tightened about her heart. “Social types,” her lips formed. How could she possibly confide to this man of the terrible tragedy that she had been through that very day? Instead of the understanding and sympathy that she had hoped to find, there were only smooth platitudes, the sightseer’s surface interest in curious “social types.” Frank Baker talked on. Rachel seemed to be listening, but her eyes had a far-off, abstracted look. She was quiet as a spinning-top is quiet, her thoughts and emotions revolving within her at high speed. “That man in love with me? Why, he doesn’t see me or feel me. I don’t exist to him. He’s only stuck on himself, blowing his own horn. Will he never stop with his ‘I,’ ‘I,’ ‘I,’? Why, I was a crazy lunatic to think that just because we took the same courses in college, he would understand me out in the real world.

But every step of my writing career was a brutal fight, like the stealing of that oatmeal from hungry children.” Even the waiters stopped removing plates and stood with the trays in their hands, listening openmouthed. One confession led to another. “When I banked the money the movies paid me for Hungry Hearts, the elation of suddenly possessing a fortune was overshadowed by the voice of conscience: What is the difference between a potbellied boss who exploits the labor of helpless workers and an author who grows rich writing of the poor?

I’m working my way through college,” she said. “I’ve been on my own since twelve.” She was so pretty! How could she have known poverty and look so gay, so decorative? I turned to the other girls around me, my feeling of righteousness begging to crumble. Just because they had never been starved enough to steal bread from hungry children, I had condemned them as callous and frivolous. The truth with which I wanted to shock them had been only the vanity of the injured showing off scars. I had erected a wall of self-defense around me and shot arrows of envy at them. Immune to envy, immune to criticism, they swept across the wall and conquered me. All at once I loved them. As I had made a bunch of confetti from my prepared speech, so I would have gladly made a bonfire of everything I had to feed the flame of their trusting youth.

A poor man is a living dead one.

What should I do? Aby is coming from France any day, and he’s got to have a home to come to. I will have to take out from my eating the meat and the milk to save together the extra five dollars. People! Give me an advice! What else can I do? If a wild wolf falls on you in the black night, will crying help you?” With a gesture of abject despair, she fell prone upon the bench. “Gottuniu! If there is any justice and mercy on this earth, then may the landlord be tortured like he is torturing me! May the fires burn him and the waters drown him! May his flesh be torn from him in pieces and his bones be ground in the teeth of wild dogs!

Hanneh Hayyeh,” said Mrs. Preston, with feeling, “these laws are far from just, but they are all we have so far. Give us time. We are young. We are still learning. We’re doing our best.” Numb with suffering the woman of the ghetto looked straight into the eyes of Mrs. Preston. “And you too—you too hold by the landlord’s side?—Oi—I see! Perhaps you too got property out by agents.” A sigh that had in it the resignation of utter hopelessness escaped from her. “Nothing can hurt me no more—And you always stood out to me in my dreams as the angel from love and beautifulness. You always made-believe to me that you’re only for democracy.” Tears came to Mrs. Preston’s eyes. But she made no move to defend herself or reply and Hanneh Hayyeh walked out in silence.

The Americans of tomorrow, the America that is every day nearer coming to be, will be too wise, too open-hearted, too friendly-handed, to let the least last-comer at their gates knock in vain with his gifts unwanted.