Top 400 Brit Bennett Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “It’s okay to not be a big man. It’s enough to be a good one.” It.”

— Brit Bennett

52. “This was how Desiree thought of herself then: the single dynamic force in Stella’s life, a gust of wind strong enough to rip out her roots. This was the story Desiree needed to tell herself and Stella allowed her to. They both felt safe inside it.”

— Brit Bennett

53. “Bones, like anything else, strong until they weren’t.”

— Brit Bennett

54. “Poorness never left you, she told him. It was a hunger that embedded itself into your bones. It starved you, even when you were full.”

— Brit Bennett

55. “Her whole life, in fact, had been a gift of good fortune – she had been given whiteness. Blonde hair, a pretty face, a nice figure, a rich father. She’d sobbed out of speeding tickets, flirted her way to endless second chances. Her whole life, a bounty of gifts she hadn’t deserved.”

— Brit Bennett

56. “Now they were slow and deliberate, the way hurt people loved, stretching carefully just to see how far their damaged muscles could go.”

— Brit Bennett

57. “In the hotel room, Blake slowly undressed her. He unzipped her skirt, unclipped her bra, bent to unfurl her nylons. He was straining against his white briefs and she felt embarrassed for him, embarrassed for all men, really, forced to wear their desire so openly. She could think of nothing more horrifying than not being able to hide what she wanted.”

— Brit Bennett

58. “A town always looked different once you’d returned, like a house where all the furniture had shifted three inches. You wouldn’t mistake it for a stranger’s house but you’d keep banging your shins on the table corners. She paused in the mouth of the woods, overwhelmed by all those pine trees, stretching on endlessly.”

— Brit Bennett

59. “You could never quite get used to loneliness; every time she thought she had, she sank further into it.”

— Brit Bennett

60. “If I could go back, I’d do everything different.” “Like what?” she said. “Oh, everything.” He turned back to the mirror. “This big ol’ world and we only get to go through it once. The saddest thing there is, you ask me.”

— Brit Bennett

61. “This river, like all rivers, remembered its course. They floated under the leafy canopy of trees, begging to forget.”

— Brit Bennett

62. “She had become white because it was practical, so practical that, at the time, her decision seemed laughably obvious. Why wouldn’t you be white if you could be? Remaining what you were or becoming something new, it was all a choice, any way you looked at it. She had just made the rational decision.”

— Brit Bennett

63. “Stella became white and Desiree married the darkest man she could find.”

— Brit Bennett

64. “But she loved the simplicity of math, a number growing or shrinking depending on which function you performed. No surprises, just one logical step leading to another.”

— Brit Bennett

65. “She felt the sly type of racism here, longer waits for tables, white girls who expected her to walk on the slushy part of the sidewalk, a drunk boy outside a salsa club yelling that she was pretty for a black girl. In a way, subtle racism was worse because it made you feel crazy. You were always left wondering, was that actually racist? Had you just imagined it?”

— Brit Bennett

66. “She had been his first love, so maybe, in a way, she had the rightful claim to his heart. Maybe it was like how when you stepped out of the grocery store line to grab bread, no one could really be mad when you returned to your spot. It wasn’t cutting if you had been there before.”

— Brit Bennett

67. “Strange that the greatest compliment an actress could receive was that she had disappeared into somebody else. Acting is not about being seen, a drama teacher told her once. True acting meant becoming invisible so that only the character shone through.”

— Brit Bennett

68. “You didn’t just find a self out there waiting. You had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.”

— Brit Bennett

69. “She couldn’t tell what unnerved her more, picturing a colored family moving in or imagining what might be done to stop them.”

— Brit Bennett

70. “At first, passing seemed so simple, she couldn’t understand why her parents hadn’t done it. But she was young then. She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.”

— Brit Bennett

71. “Even in their darkened bedroom, even to Desiree, Stella couldn’t bring herself to say. She always wanted to believe that there was something special about her but she knew that Mr. Dupont only picked her because he sensed her weakness. She was the twin who wouldn’t tell.”

— Brit Bennett

72. “You had to keep moving or the past would always catch up to you.”

— Brit Bennett

73. “BY HIGH SCHOOL, the names no longer shocked her but the loneliness did. You could never quite get used to loneliness; every time she thought she had, she sank further into it.”

— Brit Bennett

74. “But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant that white men could kill you for refusing to die. The Vignes twins were reminders of this, tiny girls in funeral dresses who grew up without a daddy because white men decided that it would be so.”

— Brit Bennett

75. “Then adulthood came, your choices solidifying, and you realize that everything you are had been set in motion years before. The rest was aftermath.”

— Brit Bennett

76. “Stella,” she sometimes told him, just for fun. She’d always been a great liar. The only difference between lying and acting was whether your audience was in on it, but it was all a performance just the same.”

— Brit Bennett

77. “At home, loss was everywhere; she could barely see past it, like trying to look out a windowpane covered in fingerprints. She would always feel trapped behind that window, between her and the rest of the world, but at least in Ann Arbor, the glass was clearer. Whenever.”

— Brit Bennett

78. “Gratitude only emphasized the depth of your lack.”

— Brit Bennett

79. “He was straining against his white briefs and she felt embarrassed for him, embarrassed for all men, really, forced to wear their desire so openly. She could think of nothing more horrifying than not being able to hide what she wanted.”

— Brit Bennett

80. “You could say nothing and, in your nothingness, feel free.”

— Brit Bennett

81. “There was nothing more tantalizing than the possibility of total destruction.”

— Brit Bennett

82. “At night, Desiree held her daughter and told her stories about her own childhood. At first she said, I have a sister named Stella, then, you have an aunt, then, once upon a time, a girl named Stella lived here.”

— Brit Bennett

83. “Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.”

— Brit Bennett

84. “Improbable events happened all the time, she tried to explain to her students, because improbability is an illusion based on our preconceptions. Often it has nothing to do with statistical truth.”

— Brit Bennett

85. “But sometimes lying was an act of love. Stella had spent too long lying to tell the truth now, or maybe, there was nothing left to reveal. Maybe this was who she had become.”

— Brit Bennett

86. “White folks kill you if you want too much, kill you if you want too little.” Willie Lee shook his head, packing tobacco into his pipe. “You gotta follow they rules but they change ’em when they feel. Devilish, you ask me.”

— Brit Bennett

87. “But maybe in those seven minutes they’d first been apart, they’d each lived a lifetime, setting out their separate paths. Each discovering who she might be.”

— Brit Bennett

88. “Willie Lee heard that the white men were angry that Leon stole their business by underbidding them. But how could you shoot a man for accepting less than what you asked for? “White folks kill you if you want too much, kill you if you want too little.” Willie Lee shook his head, packing tobacco into his pipe. “You gotta follow they rules but they change ’em when they feel. Devilish, you ask me.”

— Brit Bennett

89. “This was the first time Kennedy realized that her mother was a liar.”

— Brit Bennett

90. “This was what she loved about math: it was the same now as it had been then, and there was always a correct answer, whether she knew it or not. She found that comforting.”

— Brit Bennett

91. “Would you still love me,” she said, “if I weren’t white?” “No,” he said, tugging her closer. “Because then you wouldn’t be you.”

— Brit Bennett

92. “Eventually remembering turned into imagining. How slight the difference was between the two.”

— Brit Bennett

93. “Yes, but acting is different,” she said. “You only show people what you want to.”

— Brit Bennett

94. “She was never up to anything, of course, her days blending together into a sameness that she later found comforting. No surprises, no sudden anger, no man holding her one moment, then hitting her the next. Now life was steady.”

— Brit Bennett

95. “Being white wasn’t the most exciting part. Being anyone else was the thrill. To transform into a different person in plain sight, nobody around her even able to tell. She’d never felt so free.”

— Brit Bennett

96. “For a second, Stella wondered if she’d realized her secret. She almost wished Loretta had. It scared her, how badly she wanted to belong to somebody.”

— Brit Bennett

97. “Went to find myself, she wrote. I’m safe. Don’t worry about me. The language bothered Stella most of all. You didn’t just find a self out there waiting – you had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.”

— Brit Bennett

98. “A place was not solid, Early had learned that already. A town was jelly, forever molding around your memories.”

— Brit Bennett

99. “Look at this, look at that, she must have been such a good girl this year! Unlike all those rotten poor children staring at empty trees who must have deserved it, bad because they were poor, poor because they were bad.”

— Brit Bennett

100. “If her daughter didn’t feel like she was really hers, then nothing about her life was real.”

— Brit Bennett