"A lie was something you told because you were mean or a coward. A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn't tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been."
"Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory."
"Francie, huddled with other children of her kind, learned more that first day than she realized. She learned of the class system of a great Democracy."
"In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got."
"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?"
"The world was hers for the reading."