Anzia Yezierska Quotes

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.

I had just begun to peel the potatoes for dinner | when my oldest sister Bessie came in, her eyes far away and very tired. She dropped on the bench by the sink and turned her head to the wall.
One look at her, and I knew she had not yet found work. I went on peeling the potatoes, but I no more knew what my hands were doing. I felt only the dark hurt of her weary eyes.
I was about ten years old then. But from always it was heavy on my heart the worries for the house as if I was mother. I knew that the landlord came that morning hollering for the rent. And the whole family were hanging on Bessie’s neck for her wages. Unless she got work soon, we’d be thrown in the street to shame and to laughter for the whole world. (first lines)

Without comprehension, the immigrant would forever remain shut - a stranger in America. Until America can release the heart as well as train the hand of the immigrant, he would forever remain driven back upon himself, corroded by the very richness of the unused gifts within his soul. ("How I found America")

With the suitcase containing all her worldly possessions under her arm, Sophie Sapinsky elbowed her way through the noisy ghetto crowds. Pushcart peddlers and pullers-in shouted and gesticulated. Women with market-baskets pushed and shoved one another, eyes straining with the one thought-how to get the food a penny cheaper. With the same strained intentness, Sophie scanned each tenement, searching for a room cheap enough for her dwindling means. (beginning of "My Own People")

In an air-shaft so narrow that you could touch the next wall with your bare hands, Hanneh Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor's window. (first lines)

...It was a gesture of simple kindness, but it stirred currents in me that had never before been touched. The mountain of hurts I carried on my back from czarist Russia, and the hurts piled up looking for a job in America, dissolved. I had been accepted, recognized as a person....I tasted the bread and wine of equality. (Part Two, Chapter I)

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. (p220)

This ancient past that I had despised and rejected with the ruthlessness of youth now had me by the throat. I had never really broken away. I had only denied that which I was in my blood and bones. “Poverty ... an ornament . . . like a red ribbon on a white horse. . . .” Those were my father’s words.

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. ("America and I")

As one of the dumb, voiceless ones I speak. One of the millions of immigrants beating, beating out their hearts at your gates for a breath of

Every breath I drew was a breath of fear, every shadow a stifling shock, every footfall struck on my heart like the heavy boot of the Cossack. (beginning of "How I Found America")

Years ago, in Hollywood, Samuel Goldwyn said to me that to tell a good story, you must know the end before you begin it. And if you know the end, you can sum up the whole plot in a sentence. But I had always plunged into writing before I knew where it would take me. If a story was alive, it worked itself out as I wrote it.

Shenah Pessah paused in the midst of scrubbing the stairs of the tenement. "Ach!" she sighed. "How can his face still burn so in me when he is so long gone? How the deadness in me flames up with life at the thought of him!" (beginning of "Hunger")

I feel like a starved man who is so bewildered by the first sight of food that he wants to grab and devour the ice-cream, the roast, and the entrée all in one gulp. For ages and ages, my people in Russia had no more voice than the broomstick in the corner. The poor had no more chance to say what they thought or felt than the dirt under their feet.
And here, in America, a miracle has happened to them. They can lift up their heads like real people. After centries of suppression, they are allowed to speak. Is it a wonder that I am too excited to know where to begin?
All the starved, unlived years crowd into my throat and choke me. I don't know whether it is joy or sorrow that hurts me so. I only feel that my release is wrung with the pain of all those back of me who lived and died, their dumbness pressing down on them like stones on the heart. (beginning of "Mostly About Myself")

My heart chokes in me like in a prison! I'm dying for a little love and I got nobody-nobody!" wailed Shenah Pessah, as she looked out of the dismal basement window. (beginning of "Wings")