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Passing
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"Passing" Quotes

"Passing" by Nella Larsen follows the complex and secretive friendship between two mixed-race women in 1920s Harlem.

Quotes

It was a funny thing, how few people ever really cared. They walked on, regardless of the small tragedies, the little miseries which, in time, came to be part of the pattern of his life.

Nella Larsen

indifferencetragedy

But for the most part, people are not curious, and they don’t think. They are not interested in the whys and wherefores of things.

Nella Larsen

curiosityignorance

In a way, she was sorry for her. But in another way, she was not; for, after all, she was one of those people who do not want happiness.

Nella Larsen

empathyhappiness

I love you. I love you. But I hate you. I sometimes wish you were dead.

Nella Larsen

lovehate

Somebody would get hurt, somebody always did, but she never seemed to care.

Nella Larsen

apathyharm

And she was glad that she had not given away to the longing which she sometimes felt to hold her daughter in her arms, to foster her child, to forget the whole miserable business.

Nella Larsen

regretmotherhood

She was glad to be like her white friends, to look like them.

Nella Larsen

identitybelonging

She could have wept with self-pity, for she had never been so lonely or so miserable in her life.

Nella Larsen

self-pityloneliness

But she was not even sorry for herself. She was only weary, weary to death of it all.

Nella Larsen

wearinessresignation

After that, her life had moved in a sort of torpor, from which she was roused only by the necessity of making enough money to live on.

Nella Larsen

monotonyfinancial struggle