43 Quotes by Nella Larsen

No, certainly he didn’t. Not actually. He couldn’t, not very well, since he didn’t know. But he would have. It amounts to the same thing. And I’m sure it was just as unpleasant.

Clare Kendry cared nothing for the race. She only belonged to it.

As if aware of her desire and her hesitation, Clare remarked thoughtfully: “You know, ‘Rene, I’ve often wondered why more colored girls, girls like you and Margaret Hammer and Esther Dawson and – oh, lots of others – never ‘passed’ over.

I think,” she said at last, “that being a mother is the cruellest thing in the world.

You knew what his opinion of you was, while he – Well, ’twas ever thus. We know, always have. They don’t. Not quite. It has, you will admit, its humorous side, and sometimes, its conveniences.

If it hadn’t been for that, I’d have gone on to the end, never seeing any of you. But that did something to me, and I’ve been so lonely since! You can’t know. Not close to a single soul. Never anyone to really talk to.

Catlike. Certainly that was the word which best described Clare Kendry, if any single word could describe her. Sometimes she was hard and apparently without feeling at all; sometimes she was affectionate and rashly impulsive. And there was about her an amazing soft malice, hidden well away until provoked. Then she was capable of scratching, and very effectively too.

What right, she kept demanding of herself, had Clare Kendry to expose her, or even Gertrude Martin, to such humiliation, such downright insult?

It’s only deserters like me who have to be afraid of freaks of nature.