Top 400 Brit Bennett Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “She hated that silent appraisal, watching someone compare her to a version that she might have been. A better version, even. What if he saw something in Stella that he liked more? It would have nothing to do with looks, and that, somehow, felt even worse.”

— Brit Bennett

302. “Rather lose than know I would’ve won if I hadn’t played it safe.” “Well said.” Blake and the man clinked their glasses. Statistical truth, like any other truth, was difficult to swallow. For most people, the heart decided, not the mind.”

— Brit Bennett

303. “Sometimes she wondered if Miss Vignes was a separate person altogether. Maybe she wasn’t a mask that Stella put on. Maybe Miss Vignes was already a part of her, as if she had been split in half. She could become whichever woman she decided, whichever side of her face she tilted to the light.”

— Brit Bennett

304. “She didn’t know who Stella was anymore, and maybe she’d never quite known her at all.”

— Brit Bennett

305. “He wasn’t sure why he kept that picture. Wanted something to remember her by, maybe, if she decided to never speak to him again.”

— Brit Bennett

306. “In the dark, you could be anybody, but she knew him before he even spoke. His cologne, his rough palms. She could find him in any darkened room.”

— Brit Bennett

307. “When St. Catherine’s was built in 1938, the diocese sent over a young priest from Dublin who arrived certain that he was lost. Didn’t the bishop tell him that Mallard was a colored town? Well, who were these people walking about? Fair and blonde and redheaded, the darkest ones no swarthier than a Greek?”

— Brit Bennett

308. “I never play the girl next door,” a black guest star told her once. “I guess no one wants to live next door to me.”

— Brit Bennett

309. “The world worked differently than he’d ever imagined. People you loved could leave and there was nothing you could do about it.”

— Brit Bennett

310. “She’d fallen in love with him when she was eighteen. She hadn’t slept a night away from him in three years. In a dingy New York City hotel room, she’d slowly unwrapped his bandages, holding her breath as cool air kissed his new skin.”

— Brit Bennett

311. “She always felt lucky to be in the presence of such brilliant people. Thinkers. Blake’s colleagues viewed intelligence as a means to an end, and the end was always making more money. But in the mathematics department at Santa Monica College, no one expected to be rich. It was enough to know.”

— Brit Bennett

312. “So he liked to throw his weight around a little. Who could blame him, living in a world that refused to respect him as a man? She didn’t have to be so mouthy.”

— Brit Bennett

313. “Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims.”

— Brit Bennett

314. “Like leaving, the hardest part of returning was deciding to.”

— Brit Bennett

315. “Statistical truth, like any other truth, was difficult to swallow.”

— Brit Bennett

316. “But her wildness only scared Stella, disrupting the careful life she’d built. In the mornings, she’d stared across the breakfast table at a child she no longer recognized. Gone was her sweet-faced girl, and in her place, a tawny, long-limbed woman who changed her mind daily about the person she wanted to be.”

— Brit Bennett

317. “She liked to invent stories about her life, as if the reality were too dull to repeat.”

— Brit Bennett

318. “You must stop them, Percy,” she said. “If you don’t, there’ll be more and then what? Enough is enough!”

— Brit Bennett

319. “Of course passing wasn’t that easy. Of course that colored guard recognized her. We always know our own, her mother said.”

— Brit Bennett

320. “It’s that women’s libber,” he complained, whenever Stella worked late on campus. “She’s the one putting all those ideas into your head.” “Surprisingly, I have thoughts of my own,” she said. “Oh, that’s not what I meant – ” “It’s exactly what you meant!” “She’s not like you,” he said. “You have family. Obligations. She just has her politics.”

— Brit Bennett

321. “If only they knew. The thought ran through her head deliciously, the same way she always thought, driving on an overpass, of turning her wheel and sending herself careening over the rail. There was nothing more tantalizing than the possibility of total destruction.”

— Brit Bennett

322. “If nothing could be done about ugliness, you ought to at least look like you were trying to hide it.”

— Brit Bennett

323. “So focused on what was next that she didn’t appreciate what she’d already gotten away with. She couldn’t let herself slip up like that again. She’d have to focus. Stay alert.”

— Brit Bennett

324. “She always felt a little guilty knowing that the life she most feared was the one her mother was already living.”

— Brit Bennett

325. “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

326. “But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant – that they were not even men – and the world continued on.”

— Brit Bennett

327. “She was white, she was black, she became a new person as soon as she crossed a border. She was always inventing her life.”

— Brit Bennett

328. “Your best isn’t necessarily mine,” her daughter said.”

— Brit Bennett

329. “For the child to be a little more perfect than the parents. What could be more wonderful than that?”

— Brit Bennett

330. “And yet, if Alphonse Decuir could have strolled through the town he’d once imagined, he would have been thrilled by the sight of his great-great-great-granddaughters. Twin girls, creamy skin, hazel eyes, wavy hair. He would have marveled at them. For the child to be a little more perfect than the parents. What could be more wonderful than that?”

— Brit Bennett

331. “Even after eight years of marriage, Stella still felt a little squeamish when people asked how they’d met. A boss, his secretary, a tale as old as time.”

— Brit Bennett

332. “This was comfort, no longer wanting anything.”

— Brit Bennett

333. “When I was little,” she said, “like four or five, I thought this was just a map of our side of the world. Like there was another side of the world on some different map. My daddy told me that was stupid.” He’d brought her to a public library, and when he spun the globe, she knew that he was right. 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

334. “It’s good luck,” she’d finally said, handing her over, “for a girl to look like her daddy.”

— Brit Bennett

335. “And even though it was bad, she’d wept when she read the script. A lonely girl living in a world surrounded only by ghosts. Nothing reminded her of her own life more.”

— Brit Bennett

336. “Her mother had always hated taking pictures. She hated being nailed down in place.”

— Brit Bennett

337. “He was so hungry and so full of her, he could hardly stand it.”

— Brit Bennett

338. “But soon she felt comfortable disappearing. You could say nothing and, in your nothingness, feel free.”

— Brit Bennett

339. “In Los Angeles, he found a cleaning job at a gym near UCLA, where he met body builders who told him where to get the good stuff.”

— Brit Bennett

340. “Loretta quivered, powerless in her anger and all the angrier for it.”

— Brit Bennett

341. “A fly in milk, contaminating everything.”

— Brit Bennett

342. “In New Orleans, Stella split in two.”

— Brit Bennett

343. “How she felt that you could flick away history like shrugging a hand off your shoulder.”

— Brit Bennett

344. “You could convince anyone you belonged somewhere if you acted like you did.”

— Brit Bennett

345. “You could find a new woman anywhere, but then again, the most violent men were always the most sentimental. Pure emotion any way you look at it.”

— Brit Bennett

346. “But she imagined Stella disappearing into the night, glancing over her shoulder, panicked, as if she were being hunted, and she shook her head.”

— Brit Bennett

347. “Maybe the wealth was the freedom to reveal yourself.”

— Brit Bennett

348. “All those men,” Maman said, “all those men around town and she’s still out here chasin after him.”

— Brit Bennett

349. “What if I help you find her?” he said.”

— Brit Bennett

350. “Adele could already feel her fighting to break away, like a bird beating its wings against her palms.”

— Brit Bennett