Top 400 Brit Bennett Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 8 of 9

351. “They both found each other’s lives inscrutable, and wasn’t that the only way it could be? Didn’t Jude wonder what it would be like to care so little about your education, to know that even if the worst happened, you would be all right?”

— Brit Bennett

352. “I love shopping,′ she said, almost to herself. ‘It’s like trying on all the other people you could be.”

— Brit Bennett

353. “Two years of school, which discouraged him, but Aubrey said the time would pass anyway-why not spend it chasing after something he wanted?”

— Brit Bennett

354. “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. She was lucky to spend her days like this, knowing.”

— Brit Bennett

355. “It’s not about making a point,” Loretta said. “The school’s right down the street and Cindy’s just as smart as all those other kids.”

— Brit Bennett

356. “For most people, the heart decided, not the mind.”

— Brit Bennett

357. “We love you,” he said. “We wouldn’t lie to you.” But sometimes lying was an act of love.”

— Brit Bennett

358. “She needed a job. Money. A plan. But those children staring at her daughter. The deputy dismissing her. Sam gripping her throat. She waved over Lorna again, wanting to forget it all.”

— Brit Bennett

359. “Once a woman from the county came by to check on Adele.”

— Brit Bennett

360. “For the first time in ten years, he was staring at Desiree Vignes’s face.”

— Brit Bennett

361. “She would hear a funny joke on the streetcar or pass a friend they once knew and she would turn to tell Stella, “Hey did you – ” before remembering that she was gone. That she had left Desiree, for the first time ever, alone.”

— Brit Bennett

362. “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

363. “Maybe they’d spent their lives together modulating each other making up for what the other lacked.”

— Brit Bennett

364. “But then Desiree’s reflection appeared behind her, and Stella looked away, ashamed, almost, to be seen wanting anything at all.”

— Brit Bennett

365. “She laughed again, touching the back of his neck, and later, he would tell her that was the first time he knew. That gentle hand on the back of his neck as he steered the car across the bridge. –.”

— Brit Bennett

366. “It’s too late,” she said. “Even if she comes back. She’s already gone.”

— Brit Bennett

367. “Stella seemed as predictable as a reflection.”

— Brit Bennett

368. “How Desiree never wanted to be a part of the town that was her birthright.”

— Brit Bennett

369. “Your guilt can’t do nothin for me, honey. You want to go feel good about feelin bad, you can go on and do it right across the street.”

— Brit Bennett

370. “All there was to being white was acting like you were.”

— Brit Bennett

371. “Do you think – ” She paused, scraping the celery into a bowl. “Do you think Daddy loved you?” “I think everybody who ever hurt me loved me,” her mother said. “Do you think he loved me?” Her mother touched her cheek. “Yes,” she said. “But I couldn’t wait around to see.”

— Brit Bennett

372. “Lightness, like anything inherited at great cost, was a lonely gift.”

— Brit Bennett

373. “Nothing made a boy less exciting than the fact that you were supposed to like him.”

— Brit Bennett

374. “She was a good woman. The more time he spent around her, the more he realized how rarely he thought anybody else was actually good. Nice, maybe, but niceness was something anyone could be, whether they meant it or not. But goodness was another thing altogether.”

— Brit Bennett

375. “The twins used to love hiding behind the quilts and sheets before Desiree realized how humiliating it was, your home always filled with strangers’ dirty things.”

— Brit Bennett

376. “She was exhausted but still laughed at the sight of him, as unexpected as the sudden coming of spring. One day there was frost, and the next, bloom.”

— Brit Bennett

377. “Desiree admitting that she’d been impulsive, Stella that she was only being loyal.”

— Brit Bennett

378. “Losing a twin. Must.”

— Brit Bennett

379. “When you married someone, you promised to love every person he would be.”

— Brit Bennett

380. “But sometimes lying was an act of love.”

— Brit Bennett

381. “She couldn’t have said no to him, she’d since realised, but she didn’t want to. And maybe that was the difference, or maybe, the difference was in thinking that there was one at all.”

— Brit Bennett

382. “Stella wouldn’t even hire colored help for the house – she claimed Mexicans worked harder.”

— Brit Bennett

383. “She didn’t like talking about Sam to Early, didn’t even want to imagine both men existing within the same expanse of her life.”

— Brit Bennett

384. “She never felt darker than when she was running, and at the same time, she never felt less black, less anything.”

— Brit Bennett

385. “Good,” he said. “You got beautiful skin.” He glanced at her, but she looked away, staring down at the photo paper as an abandoned building shimmered into view. She hated to be called beautiful. It was the type of thing people only said because they felt they ought to. She thought about Lonnie Goudeau kissing her under the moss trees or inside the stables or behind the Delafosse barn at night. In the dark, you could never be too black. In the dark, everyone was the same color.”

— Brit Bennett

386. “And that’s how love worked, wasn’t it? A transference, leaping onto you if you inched close enough.”

— Brit Bennett

387. “There could have been fifty pairs of twins sitting at that dinner table, a seat for each person they had been since they’d spoken last: a battered wife and a bored one, a waitress and a professor, each woman seated next to a stranger.”

— Brit Bennett

388. “She’d grown up in her mother’s eyes, no longer her daughter but a separate woman, complete with her own secrets.”

— Brit Bennett

389. “Death, in a general sense, was background noise. She stood in the silence of it.”

— Brit Bennett

390. “The morning one of the twins returned to Mallard, Lou LeBon ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, neckline darkened with his own effort.”

— Brit Bennett

391. “His mother, rest her soul, had hated his lightness; when he was a boy, she’d shoved him under the sun, begging him to darken.”

— Brit Bennett

392. “Sometimes who you were came down to the small things.”

— Brit Bennett

393. “Being half lost was worse than being fully lost. It was impossible to know which part of you knew the way.”

— Brit Bennett

394. “You didn’t know how desperate you could be until you were.”

— Brit Bennett

395. “She glanced toward the dark woods and nodded. He led Stella to his car. He offered to drive her, not out of kindness, but because Desiree loved Stella and that was how love worked, wasn’t it? A transference, leaping onto you if you inched close enough.”

— Brit Bennett

396. “No way those girls could have turned out halfway normal. As far as he was concerned, both were a little crazy, Desiree perhaps the nuttiest of all. Playing white to get ahead was just good sense. But marrying a dark man? Carrying his blueblack child? Desiree Vignes had courted the type of trouble that would never leave.”

— Brit Bennett

397. “Her memories ebbing and flowing like the tide.”

— Brit Bennett

398. “He loved taking pictures of anything but himself.”

— Brit Bennett

399. “Only thing waitin for you out there is wildness,” her mother always said, which of course made Desiree want to go even more.”

— Brit Bennett

400. “By all the ways her daughter reminded her of Desiree, even – she might laugh with her sister about it. Are you sure she’s not yours?”

— Brit Bennett