Quotes by Anzia Yezierska

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

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

“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.””

“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.””

“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.””

“But didn’t you say that the poorest beggars are happier and freer than the rich?” I dared question Father. “You said that a poor man never has to be afraid of thieves or robbers. He can walk alone in the middle of the night and fear nobody. Poor people don’t need locks on their houses. They can leave their doors wide open, because nobody will come to steal poverty...””

“How long will love last with a husband who feeds you with hunger? Even Job said, of all his sufferings, nothing was so terrible as poverty. A poor man is a living dead one. Even dead you got to have money.””

“A writer, a poet you want for a husband? Those who sell the papers at least earn something. But what earns a poet? Do you want starvation and beggary for the rest of your days? Who’ll pay your rent? Who’ll buy you your bread? Who’ll put shoes on the feet of your children, with a husband who wastes his time writing poems of poverty instead of working for a living?””

“And then I thought, what kind of a man could I get if I smell from selling herring? A son from Zalmon the fish-peddler?””

“But Bessie brings me in every cent she earns. When a girl like mine leaves the house the father gets poorer, not richer. It’s not enough to take my Bessie without a dowry. You must pay me yet.””

“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.””

“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?””

“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.””

“A poor man is a living dead one.””