Top 400 Brit Bennett Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Telling Stella a secret was like whispering into a jar and screwing the lid tight.”

— Brit Bennett

252. “Now time had fallen right out of his pockets when he wasn’t looking.”

— Brit Bennett

253. “You meant it,” Jude said. “And you were drunk. Both things can be true.”

— Brit Bennett

254. “The display seemed so theatrically absurd that Desiree laughed when she first saw them, but Stella only stared warily, as if those lions might spring to life at any moment and maul her.”

— Brit Bennett

255. “She was a smart girl, he could tell. Plenty dull boys wanted to go to medical school but only smart girls found the nerve to apply.”

— Brit Bennett

256. “Desiree returned to the step beside her. She wrapped an arm around Stella’s shoulders, staring at the nape of her neck, pretending not to see the gray hair threading through the black. She’d always felt like the older sister, even though she only was by a matter of minutes. But maybe in those seven minutes they’d first been apart, they’d each lived a lifetime, setting out on their separate paths. Each discovering who she might be.”

— Brit Bennett

257. “Would this be the rest of her life? Constricted to a house that swallowed her as soon as she stepped inside?”

— Brit Bennett

258. “She’d always known that it was possible to be two different people in one lifetime, or maybe it was only possible for some. Maybe others were just stuck with who they were.”

— Brit Bennett

259. “You had to compete against students who’d grown up in rich families, attended private schools, hired personal tutors.”

— Brit Bennett

260. “She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but by then, it was too late. She had rung the bell, and all her life, the note would hang in the air.”

— Brit Bennett

261. “He lived in Norfolk with his new wife and three boys. Exactly what the world didn’t need, three boys growing up to be spiteful men.”

— Brit Bennett

262. “Dated light girls who would not hold his hand in public. Northern racism, he knew. That southern kind, you could keep.”

— Brit Bennett

263. “I think everybody who ever hurt me loved me...”

— Brit Bennett

264. “She’d tell her because, in spite of everything, Loretta was her only friend in the world. Because she knew that, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this, she felt, for the first time, truly white.”

— Brit Bennett

265. “He was raised in the projects of Cleveland and he loved that city with the fierceness of someone who hadn’t been given much to love.”

— Brit Bennett

266. “But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant that white men could kill you for refusing to die.”

— Brit Bennett

267. “And still, she could only think about the letters that would arrive in the spring. Rejections mostly, but maybe one yes. You only needed one yes to be happy – medical school was like love in that regard.”

— Brit Bennett

268. “Admire herself for the sake of it, as if she lived in a world where women did such a thing.”

— Brit Bennett

269. “Private, like if she told you anything about herself, she was giving away something she could never get back.”

— Brit Bennett

270. “Charity deserved a better end, she would drunkenly tell friends at bars, well into her forties, far beyond when it was appropriate for her to still care so much.”

— Brit Bennett

271. “She was too young to look this tired, but she must be, fighting all the time. Stella never fought. She always gave in. She was a coward that way.”

— Brit Bennett

272. “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. And wasn’t her daughter already doing that?”

— Brit Bennett

273. “She would leave him. She’d always had a good sense for when it was time to leave. Call it intuition or restlessness, call it whatever you want. She’d never been the type to overstay her welcome.”

— Brit Bennett

274. “And did you know Jude does things like this, she would’ve asked him, befriends white girls? It’s a new world, ain’t it? Did you know the world is so new?”

— Brit Bennett

275. “The hardest part about becoming someone else was deciding to.”

— Brit Bennett

276. “He reached over, touching Desiree’s soft curls. He was so hungry and so full of her, he could hardly stand it.”

— Brit Bennett

277. “She sacrificed for a daughter who could never learn what she’d lost.”

— Brit Bennett

278. “That was the thrill of youth, the idea that you could be anyone. That was what had captured her in the charm shop, all those years ago. 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

279. “In all of her school pictures, she’d either looked too black or over-exposed, invisible except for the whites of her eyes and teeth. The camera, Reese told her once, worked like the human eye. Meaning, it was not created to notice her.”

— Brit Bennett

280. “Early loved her hair, so she always paid it special attention. Once, Jude had seen him ease up behind her mother and bury his face in a handful of her hair. She didn’t know who she wanted to be in that moment – Early or her mother, beautiful or beholding – and she’d felt so sick with longing that she turned away.”

— Brit Bennett

281. “She told her the truth, of course – that an assassination is when someone kills you to make a point.”

— Brit Bennett

282. “A town that, like any other, was more idea than place.”

— Brit Bennett

283. “Desiree had always been the prideful one; of course she’d lash out when wounded, unlike Stella, who’d rather die than make a scene.”

— Brit Bennett

284. “She took a perverse delight in it, like she was a child dragging her over to see the drawing she’d scribbled on the wall. Look at the mess I’ve made!”

— Brit Bennett

285. “Blake was a marketing man who understood the value of his own brand, Stella and Kennedy merely an extension of it.”

— Brit Bennett

286. “She hated to be called beautiful. It was the type of thing people only said because they felt they ought to.”

— Brit Bennett

287. “For a second, in that smile, she was Mama. Then the mask slid back on, another woman taking over.”

— Brit Bennett

288. “In public, he seemed flattered when other men noticed her. In private, he punished her for their attention. And what would Sam say now, finding her in a place like this, Early standing so close she could reach out and touch the buttons down his shirt?”

— Brit Bennett

289. “Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles.”

— Brit Bennett

290. “So this is what Loretta really thought about her – a white woman swarming around to assuage her guilt. And wasn’t it true? She did feel guilty, but if anything, spending time with Loretta only made her feel even worse. Her real life seemed even more fake by comparison. And yet, she didn’t want to stay away, not even now, not when Loretta was angry at her.”

— Brit Bennett

291. “When you married someone, you promised to love every person he would be. He promised to love every person she had been.”

— Brit Bennett

292. “Loving a black man only made her feel whiter.”

— Brit Bennett

293. “She was the type of girl that boys only kissed in secret and, after, pretended that they hadn’t.”

— Brit Bennett

294. “But she watched Reese trace along the map, a part of her still hoping that her father was mistaken, somehow, that there was still more of the world waiting to be found.”

— Brit Bennett

295. “A dark man would trample her beauty. He’d love it at first, but like anything he desired and could never attain, he would soon grow to resent it. And he hated her for it.”

— Brit Bennett

296. “Desiree feeling like only herself for once, not a twin, not one half of an incomplete pair.”

— Brit Bennett

297. “Reaching for the bulging suitcase, she knew that her daughter had running in her blood too. She would always feel that urge to escape tugging at her and never understand why, not if Stella didn’t explain it to her.”

— Brit Bennett

298. “Was this who counted for colored in America, who whites wanted to keep separate? Well, how could they ever tell the difference?”

— Brit Bennett

299. “Belonging to a pattern was safe, at least; to be singular was a risk.”

— Brit Bennett

300. “Leaving was the same, regardless. Leaving was simple. Staying was the part she’d never quite mastered.”

— Brit Bennett