Bernardine Evaristo > Quotes

“as if she was the kind of woman who'd amputate her aspirations to become one of his decorative appendages”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“being trans wasn’t about playacting an identity on a whim, it’s about becoming your true self in spite of society’s pressures to be otherwise, most people on the trans spectrum felt different from childhood,”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“Divorce: such a spiteful-sounding word – but such an appealing concept. Marriage: such a softly seductive word – but such a spiteful reality.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Mr Loverman

“Who needs enemies when your life partner undermines you on a regular basis?”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“believe in egalitarianism über alles, not to be confused with being a communist, of course, I know enough about Stalin and Mao to be disabused of any fantasies in that direction at the same time, the truth is that hierarchies of power and privilege won’t disappear, every historian knows this, it’s innate to human nature and inherent in all societies in all eras and equally manifests in the animal kingdom, so I can’t pretend otherwise my job as a teacher is to help those who are disadvantaged”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“Waris said it's crazy that people are so stupid to think over one and a half billion Muslims all think and act the same way, a Muslim man carries out a mass shooting or blows people up and he's called a terrorist, a white man does the same thing and he's called a mad man

both sets are mad, Yazz”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“God a-damn me the day I chose to enter this hellish so-called marriage instead of following my Morris-loving, sweet-loving, full-blooded, hot-blooded, pumping-rumping, throbbing organ of an uncontainable, unrestrainable, undetainable man-loving heart.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Mr Loverman

“Life is about taking risks, not about burying your head in the sand”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“white people are only required to represent themselves, not an entire race”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“He turns to me, serious, grabs my wrist tight.
“What am I now? A Catholic priest you got to confess all of your sins to? If you start down that road, I got to reciprocate, and I ain’t so sure you can handle that. You want to know where this conversation will lead, my friend? A dead end, that’s where.
“Listen to me good, Barry. I have known you since 1947 when we was nippers. That’s sixty-four years, yuh hear? You and me has finally got a future to look forward to together, so let we not go digging up our past misdemeanors, right? Just sit back comfy and easy and listen to the one and only Miss Shirley Bassey and let we just enjoy the vibes, man, enjoy the vibes.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Mr Loverman

“Hazel said novels was better value than poetry books because they had more words in them, poetry books was a rip-off
(Winsome doesn’t think Hazel should be in their reading group)”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“And the numerous delays due to vandalism on the tracks or leaves on the line or sun on the line or a body under a train
How very inconsiderate, not to her
To choose to throw yourself in front of a mechanical iron beast weighing thousands of tons and racing at a top speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour?
To choose such a brutal and dramatic finale
Carole knows what drives people to such despair, knows what it’s like to appear normal but to feel herself swaying
Just one leap away
From
The amassed crowds on the platforms who carry enough hope in their hearts to stay alive
Swaying
Just one leap away from
Eternal
Peace”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“one thing she’s learnt is that falling hopelessly, helplessly in love is actually a highly selective process”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“I don't want you to give in, I want you to change, to understand my reasoning at a deeper level and accept it as the truth.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“Courtney added that as she only fancies black men and is likely going to have mixed-race children, her ‘white privilege’ is in any case going to be seriously dented, like at least 50% of it, and it’s incredible in this day and age that she’d never met any black people in the flesh before she came to university from Dartingford which is entirely white except for three Asians”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“I was grateful to have him to support and steer me, even though he wasn’t particularly good-looking or with a dashing personality, both attributes I’d imagined for a husband before I was mature enough to accept that it was easier to dream
than it was to make the dream come true”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren & the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn & our brethren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs & our men & our mandem & the LGBTQI+ members of the human family”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“infrastructures they’re actively not contributing to through tax avoidance and evasion while hypocritically scorning the underclasses as the scourge of society who sponge off the state when they’re the ones who are the biggest scroungers on society with no sense of community responsibility other than a very self-aggrandizing, tax-deductible form of fashionable charity they like to call philanthropism!”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“it took her years to realise she wasn't being slow and stupid, she leaned the hard way to shoehorn herself into debates, to force them to explain exactly what the hell they were talking about, to hold them to account.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“She likes to walk barefoot inside the house, even in winter
It’s one of the secretes of her long-lasting mobility, keeping her toes spread and feet grounded, same as all the other beasts of nature
Hooves, that’s what she’s got
hooves”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“I am an individual, specific, not generic.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Mr Loverman

“Amma wanted her daughter to be free, feminist and powerful
Later she took her on personal development courses for children to give her the confidence and articulacy to flourish in any setting
Big mistake
Mum, Yazz said at fourteen when she was pitching to go to Reading Music Festival with her friends, it would be to the detriment of my juvenile development if you curtailed my activities at this critical stage in my journey towards becoming the independent-minded and fully self-expressed adult you expect me to be, I mean, do you really want me rebelling against your old-fashioned rules by running away from the safety of my home to live on the streets and having to resort to prostitution to survive and thereafter drug addiction, crime, anorexia and abusive relationships with exploitative bastards twice my age before my early demise in a crack house?
Amma fretted the whole weekend her little girl way away”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“there is someone for everyone in this world”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“my fingers penetrated your bushy hair, pulled it up in tufts, squeezed the tension out of your head, to your quiet, grateful groans. I untied the Gordian knots in your shoulders with juniper oil, pummelled your back with my fists, knuckle each vertebrae down to your coccyx, knead your hard buttocks, rub oil into your legs, bathe your tired feet, squeeze them until your tingles shoot up my arm, I chew each toe in turn until it is softened, bite into your soles like a joint of pork, you cannot help but giggle, sir, I turn you over, with my palms, rotate your temples, trace the curves on your face, touching yet not, three fingers inside your mouth, let you suckle, baby, from belly to breast, I massage your chest in concentric circles, pinch your nipples, nibble gently, set my belly-dancer tongue on to them, take your hands, my love, tie them above your head, with your belt, I sit astride my steed, take the reins, my flexible muscles holding you in, flexing like strong fists, tighten and release, teasing you, taming you, your eyes are shut, you have died and gone to Olympus, smiling, I slap it off, so hard my hand hurts, your eyes shoot open like a dead man dying, I slap you again, you feign amusement, your eyes suggest so this is slap and tickle? I take your riding crop, fold it, lash your chest. ‘Take that!’ I hiss. ‘How dare you humour me. Who’s the boss now?”
― Bernardine Evaristo, The Emperor's Babe

“African peoples were referred to as black long after the word made its appearance in the English language, so it makes no sense to retroactively impose racist connotations on to its everyday usage, and if you do, you’re going to drive yourself mad and, I’m sorry to say, everyone else with you”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“I'm not a babe to them, Ams, I'm an old-school has-been who's part of the problem, they don't respect me.
Then you need to talk to them, Dom, and we should celebrate that many more women are reconfiguring feminism and that grassroots activism is spreading like wildfire and millions of women are waking up to the possibility of taking ownership of our world as fully-entitled human beings.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“she's got what she needs, not the same as what she wants”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“Yazz was the miracle she never thought she wanted, and having a child really did complete her, something she rarely confided because it somehow seemed anti-feminist”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“Megan should have been grateful and accepted her cute status, what girl doesn’t want to be told how lovely she is, how special? except it felt wrong, even at a young age, something in her realized that her prettiness was supposed to make her compliant, and when she wasn’t, when she rebelled, she was letting down all those invested in her being adorable”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“She realized that knowing someone comes from money isn’t the same as witnessing the extent of it in close proximity”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other