Betsy Tacy Quotes

She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.

Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.

Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again.

In silence the three of them looked at the sunset and thought about God.

Then he kissed her. Betsy didn't believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn't mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing.

The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright.

Good things come, but they're never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect.

Say, you told me you thought Les Miserables was the greatest novel ever written. I think Vanity Fair is the greatest. Let's fight. - Joe Willard

You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.

She tried to act as though it were nothing to go to the library alone. But her happiness betrayed her. Her smile could not be restrained, and it spread from her tightly pressed mouth, to her round cheeks, almost to the hair ribbons tied in perky bows over her ears.

People were always saying to Margaret, 'Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?' Margaret would smile politely, for she was very polite, but privately she stormed to Betsy with flashing eyes, 'I'm not going to do anything. I want to just live. Can't people just live?

And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories.

The most important part of religion isn't in any church. It's down in your own heart. Religion is in your thoughts, and in the way you act from day to day, in the way you treat other people. It's honesty, and unselfishness, and kindness. Especially kindness.

Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?

The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.

Betsy. The great war is on but I hope ours is over. Please come home. Joe.

They soon stopped being ten years old. But whatever age they were seemed to be exactly the right age for having fun.

What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it life...and promise.

One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star

You have two numbers in your age when you are ten. It's the beginning of growing up.

Our lives can hold just so much. If they're filled with one thing, they can't be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.

When there are boys you have to worry about how you look, and whether they like you, and why they like another girl better, and whether they're going to ask you to something or other. It's a strain.

Muster your wits; stand in your own defence...

The older I get the more mixed up life seems. When you're little, it's all so plain. It's all laid out like a game ready to play. You think you know exactly how it's going to go. But things happen...

I've got to stop thinking about myself so much--about how I look, how I'm impressing someone, whether I'm popular or not. I've got to start thinking about other people, all the people I meet.

Do you girls have hope chests?' Lloyd asked. We certainly do.' I don't,' said Betsy. 'My husband and I are going to use paper plates and napkins.' Poor Joe!' Lucky Larry!

You don't grow up, she reasoned now, until you begin to evaluate yourself, to recognize your good traits and acknowledge that you have a few faults.

We're growing up," Betsy said aloud. She wasn't even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it was irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except to try and see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be. "I'd like to be a fine one," Betsy thought quickly and urgently.

We'll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That's when they bloom, tra la.

It looks like something out of Whittier's "Snowbound,"' Julia said. Julia could always think of things like that to say.

Betsy liked to talk. Her father always said she got it from her mother, and her mother always said she got it from her father. But whomever she got it from she was certainly a talker.

This was Betsy and Tacy's private corner. Betsy's mother was a great believer in people having private corners, and the piano box was plainly meant to belong to Betsy and Tacy, for it fitted them so snugly.

Betsy did not answer. She was a talker, her family always said, but sometimes when she most wanted to talk she couldn't say a word.

Julia was as happy as Betsy was, almost. One nice thing about Julia was that she rejoiced in other people's luck.

Betsy liked to read her stories aloud and she read them like an actress. She made her voice low and thrillingly deep. She made it shake with emotion. She laughed mockingly and sobbed wildly when the occasion required.

Sometimes the west showed clouds like tiny pink feathers; sometimes it showed purple mountains and green lakes; sometimes the clouds were scarlet with gold around the edges. Betsy

That's the way you have to be with boys," said Betsy. "Beam about their old football when you're dying to know whether they're going to take you to a party.

... the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.

Betsy was so full of joy that she had to be alone. She went upstairs to her bedroom and sat down on Uncle Keith's trunk. Behind Tacy's house the sun had set. A wind had sprung up and the trees, their color dimmed, moved under a brooding sky. All the stories she had told Tacy and Tib seemed to be dancing in those trees, along with all the stories she planned to write some day and all the stories she would read at the library. Good stories. Great stories. The classics. Not Rena's novels.

After Commencement Day, the world!" Joe said. "With Betsy.

Come in early, so there'll be time to pop corn,' Mrs. Ray said. If she mentioned popping corn, they always came in early. So she usually mentioned it.

New things are easier to do than old familiar things when there's going to be a change," Betsy decided profoundly.

We're growing up and I don't like it," said Tacy, as they say at Heinz's later, drinking coffee.

Well, Betsy," he said, "your mother tells me that you are going to use Uncle Keith's trunk for a desk. That's fine. You need a desk. I've often noticed how much you like to write. The way you eat up those advertising tablets from the store! I never saw anything like it. I can't understand it though. I never write anything but checks myself. " "Bob!" said Mrs. Ray. "You wrote the most wonderful letters to me before we were married. I still have them, a big bundle of them. Every time I clean house I read them over and cry." "Cry, eh?" said Mr. Ray, grinning. "In spite of what your mother says, Betsy, if you have any talent for writing, it comes from family. Her brother Keith was mighty talented, and maybe you are too. Maybe you're going to be a writer." Betsy was silent, agreeably abashed. "But if you're going to be a writer," he went on, "you've got to read. Good books. Great books. The classics.

Did he know that she was so dissatisfied with herself that she was always pretending to be different? Probably he did, and despised her for it. More than anyone she knew, Joe Willard was always, fearlessly, himself.

All those resolutions she had made on Babcock's bay! How they had been smashed to smithereens! She wondered whether life consisted of making resolutions and breaking them, of climbing up and slipping down. 'I believe that's it', she thought. 'And the bright side of it is that you never slip down to quite the point you started climbing from. You always gain a little....' She thought about those lists she had made in her programs for self-improvement. She hadn't followed them out by any means, but they had revealed her ideals.... 'We're growing up,' Betsy said aloud. She wasn't even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it was irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except try to see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be. 'I'd like to be a fine one,' Betsy thought quickly and urgently.

Did we bring a lunch?' asked Tacy. 'Yes,' said Betsy. 'It's under the seat. There are chicken sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and potato salad and watermelon and chocolate cake and sweet pickles and sugar cookies and ice cream.' 'It ought to be plenty,' Tacy said.

Betsy dreamed about going away from Deep Valley, but she didn't for a moment suspect that around a bend in her Winding Hall of Fate a journey was actually waiting.

Our lives can only hold so much. If they’re filled with one thing, they can’t be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.

Thoughts are such fleet magic things. Betsy's thoughts swept a wide arc while Uncle Keith read her poem aloud. She thought of Julia learning to sing with Mrs. Poppy. She thought of Tib learning to dance. She thought of herself and Tacy and Tib going into their 'teens. She even thought of Tom and Herbert and of how, by and by, they would be carrying her books and Tacy's and Tib's up the hill from high school.

This going around with boys makes me sick," said Tacy. "I like Herbert Humphreys," said Tib. It was just like Tib to like a boy and say so. "Oh, if you have to have a boy around, it might as well be Herbert," said Betsy, who liked him too. "He wears cute clothes," said Tacy, blushing. Herbert Humphreys, who had come to Deep Valley from St. Paul, wore knickerbockers. The other boys in their grade wore plain short pants.

You’ll love it, Betsy. Each room illustrates a period. They run from the Stone Age to the death of King Ludwig the Second. Let’s go through them in order!” “Oh, you Germans!” Betsy teased. “Such thoroughness! You know, don’t you, that there are over a hundred rooms?

Some characters become your friends for life. That’s how it was for me with Betsy and Tacy. —JUDY BLUME

How does a girl act with boys, exactly?” Tacy asked. “Oh,” said Betsy airily, “you just curl your hair and use a lot of perfume and act plagued when they tease you.

They always ate and made tea on the alcohol lamp before going to bed. This was quite in the German tradition, Tilda said. Germans in their homes ate six meals a day: breakfast, second breakfast, dinner, afternoon coffee, supper and in the evening tea or beer with sandwiches and kuchen. Betsy, in the cherry-red bathrobe, and Tilda in a blue one, feasted merrily.

She felt a little better about Leonard out here in the country. It was just being close to nature, she supposed. In the country you felt as you never could in town the return of spring after winter. You felt a sort of pulse in the earth which proved that nothing dies, that everything comes back in beauty. Leonard was coming back... in some place beautiful enough to pay him for leaving the world. God knew all about his music, too. He would use that music someplace.

In the little yellow cottage which had once been the Ray house, lights were shining. It could almost have been home still. Betsy and Tacy could almost have been children again. “I wish I still lived there,” said Betsy, hugging Tacy, partly from love and partly from cold. “It’s such trouble to grow up.

Joe Willard turned from his study of the trees beyond the window and raised his hand. 'Yes, Joe?' Mr. Gaston said, changing his tone. 'It is my opinion sir, that apple blossoms are pink.' Mr. Gaston was silent, stunned. 'Pinkish, rather.' Joe continued. 'I think Betsy's word 'rosy' is excellent. They're colored just enough to make the effect rosy.' The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.

I was sunk. I couldn't get any news, and Hawthorne kept chewing me up. So, trying to make up for the stories I was missing, I started spending hours in the document room. The other boys never go in there. It's just a morgue for papers." "What kind of papers?" "Oh, papers filed by citizens having court troubles - complaints, countercomplaints, bills of particulars, suits for damages. You have to dig to find one with a story in it.

The next morning, of course, Betsy made a list. Lists were always her comfort. For years she had made lists of books she must read, good habits she must acquire, things she must do to make herself prettier—like brushing her hair a hundred strokes at night, and manicuring her fingernails, and doing calisthenics before an open window in the morning. (That one hadn’t lasted long.) It was fun making this list, sitting in bed with her breakfast tray on her lap…hot chocolate, crisp hard rolls, and a pat of butter. Hanni had brought it to her after closing the windows and pushing back the velvet draperies. Betsy felt like a heroine in one of her own stories; their maids always awakened them that way. 1. Learn the darn money. 2. Study German. (You’ve forgotten all you knew.) 3. Buy a map and learn the city—from end to end, as you told Papa you would. 4. Read the history of Bavaria. You must have it for background. 5. Go to the opera. (You didn’t stay in Madeira because Munich is such a center for music and art???) 6. Go to the art galleries. (Same reason.) 7. Write! Full of enthusiasm, she planned a schedule. First, each morning, she would have her bath, and then write until noon. After the midday dinner she would go out and learn the city. She would go to the galleries, museums, and churches. She would have coffee out—for atmosphere. “Then I’ll come home and study German and read Bavarian history. And after supper…” she tried not to remember the look of that dining room…“I’ll write my diary-letter, except when I go to the opera or concerts.

You're going to be a writer," he repeated, "and you need more education. That's plain. But college isn't the only place to get an education. I have a 'snoggestion.'" That was what Mr. Ray always called a particularly good suggestion. "I've sounded Mamma out and she approves. How would you like a year abroad?

Why doesn't Tacy like boys?' asked Alice. 'But I do like them,' protested Tacy. 'I just don't think they are little tin gods.

That affair with Tony helped my writing,” she told Tacy. “I mean, it will when I get around to write. It’s good for writers to suffer.” Tony dropped in often, teasing and affectionate as ever, and quite unaware of having improved her art.

She could feel the Big Hill looking down as the Crowd danced at Tib’s wedding in the chocolate-colored house.

SUMMER

Betsy felt happy, delicious, emptied of trouble.

The five-year-olds were the most important members of the large doll families. Everything pleasant happened to them. They had all the adventures.

Episcopalian.

You can't hand boys around as though they were pieces of cake," she said. "Don't worry about getting a boy for me, Betsy. Boys just don't seem important to me. They don't seem any more important to me than they ever did." "Tacy!" said Betsy. "You're beyond me!" "Well!" said Tacy. "That's the way I am.

Of course, in Switzerland she had been bitterly unhappy. The nagging homesickness had returned, mixed with loneliness for Marco. There had been letters and telegrams from him at every stopping place. Sometimes, falling asleep in strange hotels, she had thought again that she was mistaken, that she did love him after all. There was every reason in the world why she should, and it would be so easy to write and tell him so! She had imagined his overflowing happiness on receiving her letter. He would probably join her, she had thought; they would see Paris together, she would give up London and they would go home to be married. But there, somehow, her imagination had always rebelled. Something inside you told you when you didn't love a person, just as...something...told you when you did, even though he was thousands of miles away and you could hardly bear to think about him because you'd probably lost him.