“The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“It hurt. It hurt like hell. But it didn’t matter, if no one knew.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“Everything can't be explained by some general biological phrase.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“I feel like the oldest person in the world with the longest stretch of life before me.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“Well, what of it? If sex isn’t a joke, what is it”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“And yet she hadn't the air of a woman whose life had been touched by uncertainty or suffering. Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“She isn't stupid. She's intelligent enough in a purely feminine way. Eighteenth-century France would have been a marvellous setting for her, or the old South if she hadn't made the mistake of being born a Negro.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“But she did not look the future in the face. She wanted to feel nothing, to think nothing; simply to believe that it was all silly invention on her part. Yet she could not. Not quite.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“She wished to find out about this hazardous business of “passing,” this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“I'm not such an idiot that I don't realize that if a man calls me a nigger it's his fault the first time, but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“The trouble with Clare was not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“Money's awfully nice to have. In
fact, all things considered, I think, 'Rene, that
it's even worth the price.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“she regarded with an astonishment that had in it a mild degree of amusement the violence of the feelings which it stirred in her.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
“She laughed and the ringing bells in her laugh had a hard metallic sound.”
― Nella Larsen, quote from Passing
Nella Larsen
Born place: in Chicago, Illinois, The United States
Born date April 13, 1891
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“When I was a girl . . . I imagined that life was individual, one's own affair; that the events happening in the world outside were important enough in their own way, but were personally quite irrelevant. Now, like the rest of my generation, I have had to learn again and again the terrible truth . . . that no life is really private, or isolated, or self-sufficient. People's lives were entirely their own, perhaps--and more justifiably--when the world seemed enormous, and all its comings and goings were slow and deliberate. But this is so no longer, and never will be again, since man's inventions have eliminated so much of distance and time; for better, for worse, we are now each of us part of the surge and swell of great economic and political movements, and whatever we do, as individuals or as nations, deeply affects everyone else.”
― Vera Brittain, quote from Testament of Youth
“We are friends, Brin, and friends do for each other what they see needs to be done,” the girl had explained in the late hours of the previous night when all talk had drifted into weary whispers. “Friendship is a thing sensed inwardly as much as a thing pledged openly. One feels friendship and becomes bound by it. It was this that drew Whisper to me and gained me his loyalty. I loved him as he loved me, and each of us sensed that in the other. I have sensed it with you as well. We are to be friends, all of us, and if we are to be friends, then we must share both good and bad in our friendship. Your needs become mine.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from The Sword of Shannara Trilogy
“So this was liberty. Mary was beginning to recognise the taste of it in her mouth: terror salting the sweetness.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin
“when you were young and your heart was an open book you used to say live and let live.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“People never looked up. They looked down, they looked from side to side, but almost never did they think to tilt their heads back and see what was above them. That little human idiosyncrasy left a lot of room for error,”
― Stacia Kane, quote from Unholy Ghosts
Burial Rites
Rock Chick
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The Dark Highlander
The Bronze Bow
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