Quotes from Anzia Yezierska

A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.

The power that makes grass grow, fruit ripen, and guides the bird in flight is in us all.

Woe is me! Bitter is me! For what is my life? Why didn't the ship go under and drown me before I came to America?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A poor man is a living dead one.

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.

I too was frightened the first time I felt I hated my father. I felt like a criminal. But could I help it what was inside of me? I had to feel what I felt even if it killed me.

If I had never met him I would have dreamed him into being.

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

"The world is a wheel always turning," philosophized Mrs. Pelz. "Those who were high go down low, and those who've been low go up higher."

The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof.

This fire in me, it's not just the hunger of a woman for a man - it's the hunger of all my people back of me, from all ages, for light, for the life higher!

The only compensation for the artist is the chance to feed hungry hearts.

I tasted the bread and wine of equality.