Hungry Hearts

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)

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

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")

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")

Like all people who have nothing, I lived on dreams. (beginning of "The Miracle")

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")

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")

"The world is a wheel always turning."

"...When I only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts." ("Wings")

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")