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Nella Larsen

Quicksand

  • Sophia Millerцитирует2 года назад
    If you couldn’t prove your ancestry and connections, you were tolerated, but you didn’t “belong.”
  • Sophia Millerцитирует2 года назад
    No family. That was the crux of the whole matter. For Helga, it accounted for everything, her failure here in Naxos, her former loneliness in Nashville.
  • Sophia Millerцитирует2 года назад
    Bitterly she reflected that James had speedily and with entire ease fitted into his niche. He was now completely “naturalized,” as they used laughingly to call it. Helga, on the other hand, had never quite achieved the unmistakable Naxos mold, would never achieve it, in spite of much trying. She could neither conform nor be happy in her unconformity.
  • Sophia Millerцитирует2 года назад
    the fact that she was utterly unfitted for teaching, even for mere existence, in Naxos. She was a failure here. She had, she conceded now, been silly, obstinate, to persist for so long. A failure. Therefore, no need, no use, to stay longer.
  • Sophia Millerцитирует2 года назад
    It couldn’t be spanned by one sympathetic teacher. It was useless to offer her atom of friendship, which under the existing conditions was neither wanted nor understood.
  • Sophia Millerцитирует2 года назад
    This great community, she thought, was no longer a school. It had grown into a machine. It was now a showplace in the black belt, exemplification of the white man’s magnanimity, refutation of the black man’s inefficiency. Life had died out of it. It was, Helga decided, now only a big knife with cruelly sharp edges ruthlessly cutting all to a pattern, the white man’s pattern. Teachers as well as students were subjected to the paring process, for it tolerated no innovations, no individualisms. Ideas it rejected, and looked with open hostility on one and all who had the temerity to offer a suggestion or ever so mildly express a disapproval. Enthusiasm, spontaneity, if not actually suppressed, were at least openly regretted as unladylike or ungentlemanly qualities.
  • Savannah Castilloцитирует4 года назад
    f she were to get away from Naxos with anything like the haste which she now so ardently desired.
  • Savannah Castilloцитирует4 года назад
    Knowing full well that it was important, she nevertheless rebelled at the unalterable truth that it could influence her actions, block her desires
  • Savannah Castilloцитирует4 года назад
    Black, very broad brows over soft, yet penetrating, dark eyes, and a pretty mouth, whose sensitive and sensuous lips had a slight questioning petulance and a tiny dissatisfied droop, were the features on which the observer’s attention would fasten; though her nose was good, her ears delicately chiseled, and her curly blue-black hair plentiful and always straying in a little wayward, delightful way.
  • Savannah Castilloцитирует4 года назад
    because Naxos Negroes knew what was expected of them
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