76 Quotes by Brit Bennett

Maybe she'd never really known her mother at all. And if you couldn't know the person whose body was your first home, then who could you ever know?

Her body changed, his body changing, familiar and foreign at the same time. When you married someone, you promised to love every person he would be. He promised to love every person she had been. And here they were, still trying, even though the past and the future were both mysteries.

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.

We were girls once. As hard as that is to believe. Oh, you can’t see it now—our bodies have stretched and sagged, faces and necks drooping. That’s what happens when you get old. Every part of you drops, as if the body is moving closer to where it’s from and where it’ll return. But we were girls once, which is to say, we have all loved an ain’t-shit man.

This river, like all rivers, remember its course

The key to staying lost was to never love anything. This was his gift, a short-memory. A long memory could drive a man crazy.

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

We were girls once. As hard as that is to believe. //Oh you can't see it now--our bodies have stretched and sagged, faces and necks drooping. That's what happens when you get old. Every part of you drops, as if the body is moving closer to where it's from and where it'll return.

Barry prided himself on his ability to keep his lives separate. . . He was Bianca on two Saturday nights a month, and otherwise, he pushed her out of sight, even though he thought about her, shopped for her, planned for her eventual return. Barry went to faculty meetings and family reunions and church, Bianca always lingering on the edge of his mind. She had her role to play and Barry had his. You could live a life this way, split. As long as you knew who was in charge.