76 Quotes by Brit Bennett

Sickness burrowed deep inside you, and even if you were cured, even if you could be cured, you would never forget how it felt to be betrayed by your own body. So when he knocked on doors, carrying donated meals, he did not tell the sick to get well. He just came to sit with them while they weren't.

Her father had been so light that, on a cold morning, she could turn his arm over to see the blue of his veins. But none of that mattered when the white men came for him.

You can escape a town, but you cannot escape blood.

Nobody had warned her of this as a girl, when they carried on over her beautiful light complexion - how easily her skin would wear the mark of an angry man.

Desiree knew because Stella had done it in New Orleans. Slipped out of one life into another as easily as stepping into the next room.

In the dormitories, she'd been surrounded by the relentlessly ambitious, but in that West Hollywood apartment building, all of the neighbors she met were people whose dreams of fame had already been dashed. Cinematographers working at Kodak stores, screenwriters teaching English to immigrants, actors starring in burlesque shows in seedy bars.

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.

She'd already learned that pretty exposes you and pretty hides you and like most girls, she hadn't yet learned how to navigate the difference.

She licked cinnamon sugar off her fingers, sun-heavy and happy, the type of happiness that before might have felt ordinary, but now seemed fragile, like if she stood too quickly, it might slide off her shoulders and break.