“Brian darling, I’m really not such an idiot that I don’t realize that if a man calls me a nigger it’s his fault the… — Nella Larsen Copy Share Image
“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.” — Nella Larsen Copy Share
“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… — Nella Larsen Copy Share Image
These people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of… — Nella Larsen Copy Share Image
“And mingled with her disbelief and resentment was another feeling, a question. Why hadn’t she spoken that day? Why, in the face of Bellew’s ignorant hate and aversion, had she concealed her own origin? Why had she allowed him to make his assertions and express his misconceptions undisputed? Why, simply because of Clare Kendry, who had exposed her to such… — Nella Larsen Copy Share
“But there was, she knew, something else. Happiness, she supposed. Whatever that might be. What, exactly, she wondered, was happiness. Very positively she wanted… — Nella Larsen Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“This, Irene told her, was the year 1927 in the city of New York, and hundreds of white people of Hugh Wentworth’s type came… — Nella Larsen Copy Share Image
that's what everybody wants, just a little more money, even the people who have it. — Nella Larsen Copy Share Image
“Not so lonely that that old, queer, unhappy restlessness had begun again within him; that craving for some place strange and different, which at the beginning of her marriage she had had to make such strenuous efforts to repress, and which yet faintly alarmed her, though it now sprang up at gradually lessening intervals.” — Nella Larsen Copy Share
“After all these years to still blame her like this. Hadn’t his success proved that she’d been right in insisting that he stick to his profession right there in New York? Couldn’t he see, even now, that it had been best? Not for her, oh no, not for her—she had never really considered herself—but for him and the boys. Was… — Nella Larsen Copy Share