Nella Larsen Quotes & Sayings

That's what everybody wants, just a little more money, even the people who have it. — Nella Larsen

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

What are friends for, if not to help bear our sins? — Nella Larsen

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

If sex isn't a joke, what is it? — Nella Larsen

Somewhere, within her, in a deep recess, crouched discontent. She began to lose confidence in the fullness of her life, the glow began to fade from her conception of it. As the days multiplied, her need of something, something vaguely familiar, but which she could not put a name to and hold for definite examination, became almost intolerable. She went through moments of overwhelming anguish. She felt shut in, trapped. — Nella Larsen

Children aren't everything. There are other things in the world, thought I admit some people don't seem to suspect it. — Nella Larsen

To each his own milieu. Enhance what was already in one's possession. — Nella Larsen

New York's the lonesomest place in the world if you don't know anybody. — Nella Larsen

Have you ever stopped to think 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

She hated to admit that money was the most serious difficulty. Knowing full well that it was important, she nevertheless rebelled at the unalterable truth that it could influence her actions, block her desires. A sordid necessity to be grappled with. — Nella Larsen

It hurt. It hurt like hell. But it didn't matter, if no one knew. — Nella Larsen

It was only that she wanted him to be happy, resenting, however, his inability to be so with things as they were, and never acknowledging that though she did want him to be happy, it was only in her own way and by some plan of hers for him that she truly desired him to be so. — Nella Larsen

Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it — Nella Larsen

I feel like the oldest person in the world with the longest stretch of life before me. — Nella Larsen

Well, what of it? If sex isn't a joke, what is it — Nella Larsen

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

Everything can't be explained by some general biological phrase. — Nella Larsen

I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world. — Nella Larsen

These people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naive, spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destructions. — Nella Larsen

Lies, injustice, and hypocrisy are a part of every ordinary community. Most people achieve a sort of protective immunity, a kind of callousness, toward them. If they didn't, they couldn't endure. — Nella Larsen

But there was, she knew, something else. Happiness, she supposed. Whatever that might be. What, exactly, she wondered, was happiness. Very positively she wanted it. — Nella Larsen

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

Incited. That was it, the guidingprinciple of her life in Copenhagen. She was incited to make an impression, a voluptous impression. She was incited to inflame attention and admiration. She was dressed for it, subtly schooled for it. And after a little while she gave herself up wholly to the fascinating business of being seen, gaped at, desired. — Nella Larsen

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