Top 400 Brit Bennett Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Would they ever spend time like that together again? Could you be nostalgic for a friendship that wasn’t over yet or did the fact that you were nostalgic mean that it already was?”

— Brit Bennett

53. “It’s okay to not be a big man. It’s enough to be a good one.” It.”

— Brit Bennett

54. “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

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

— 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. “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

58. “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

59. “You shouldn’t tell people the truth because you want to hurt them. You should tell them because they want to know it. And I think you want to know now.”

— Brit Bennett

60. “The how of any betrayal was the hardest part to justify. How the lies can be assembled and stacked and maintained until the truth was completely hidden behind them.”

— Brit Bennett

61. “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

62. “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

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

— Brit Bennett

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

— Brit Bennett

65. “She couldn’t imagine living like this – hanging on a cliff, exposed by glass. But maybe the rich didn’t feel a need to hide. Maybe wealth was the freedom to reveal yourself.”

— Brit Bennett

66. “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

67. “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

68. “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

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

— Brit Bennett

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

— Brit Bennett

72. “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

73. “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

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

— Brit Bennett

75. “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

76. “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

77. “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

78. “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

79. “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

80. “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

81. “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

82. “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

83. “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

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

— Brit Bennett

85. “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

86. “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

87. “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

88. “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

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

— Brit Bennett

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

— Brit Bennett

91. “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

92. “Your mama still got some of that in her. She still think she better than us.” She didn’t understand exactly what he meant, but she liked being part of an us. People thought that being one of a kind made you special. No, it just made you lonely. What was special was belonging with someone else.”

— Brit Bennett

93. “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

94. “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

95. “In the morning, during her ride to Maison Blanche, she closed her eyes and slowly became her. She imagined another life, another past. No footsteps thundering up the porch steps, no ruddy white man grabbing her father, no Mr. Dupont pressing against her in the pantry. No Mama, no Desiree. She let her mind go blank, her whole life vanishing, until she became new and clean as a baby.”

— Brit Bennett

96. “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

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

— Brit Bennett

98. “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

99. “True acting meant becoming invisible so that only the character shone through.”

— Brit Bennett

100. “That was the thing about death. Only the specifics of it hurt. Death, in a general sense, was background noise. She stood in the silence of it.”

— Brit Bennett