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Passing QUOTES

Passing QUOTES

1 " Well, what of it? If sex isn’t a joke, what is it "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

2 " It hurt. It hurt like hell. But it didn’t matter, if no one knew. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

3 " 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 , Passing

4 " Everything can't be explained by some general biological phrase. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

5 " I feel like the oldest person in the world with the longest stretch of life before me. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

6 " 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 , Passing

7 " 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 , Passing

8 " 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 , Passing

9 " 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 , Passing

10 " 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 , Passing

11 " It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

12 " It was the most brilliant exhibition of conversational weightlifting that Irene had ever seen. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

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

― Nella Larsen , Passing

14 " It’s easy for a Negro to ‘pass’ for white. But I don’t think it would be so simple for a white person to ‘pass’ for colored. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

15 " 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. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

16 " 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 , Passing

17 " She laughed and the ringing bells in her laugh had a hard metallic sound. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

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

― Nella Larsen , Passing

19 " Have you ever stopped to think, Clare,” Irene demanded, “how much unhappiness and downright cruelty are laid to the loving-kindness of the Lord? And always by His most ardent followers, it seems. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing

20 " Security. Was it just a word? If not, then was it only by the sacrifice of other things, happiness, love, or some wild ecstasy that she had never known, that it could be obtained? And did too much driving, too much faith in safety and permanence, unfit one for these other things?
Irene didn't know, couldn't decide, though for a long time she sat questioning and trying to understand. Yet all the while, in spite of her searchings and feelings of frustration, she was aware that, to her, security was the most important and desired thing in life. Not for any of the others, or for all of them, would she exchange it. She wanted only to be tranquil. Only, unmolested, to be allowed to direct for their own best good the lives of her sons and her husband. "

― Nella Larsen , Passing