Melanie Benjamin Quotes

My breath sour against my fist, which I still held to my mouth as if this was a sorrow that could be stifled.

So now he was throwing a party. The most swellegant, elegant party evah.

'it's not that you are too small, my little chick,but rather that the world is too big.

Only the weak need ... heroes ... and heroes need ... those around them to remain weak.

Afraid of everything because nothing truly terrible had happened to me, yet.

I resigned myself to looking for that face that I clearly recalled - until the day when I couldn't. It happened so suddenly.

At the age of twenty-five, he had conquered not only the entire planet but all the sky above it.

Contemplation, rather than action; that seemed to be my lot in life, and I was ashamed of it even as I craved it.

I still can't stop marveling that this same boy chose me; and I'm glad that I can't, for we should rejoice in being seen, needed. Loved.

To live for oneself is a terrifying prospect; there is comfort in martyrdom ...
p 364

old-fashioned flowers, it looked like an English garden.

But they all recognized the steady, no-nonsense influence Jack had had on Truman; he was the ballast to Truman's airy sails.

When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn't planned.

All of this was mine, simply for agreeing to marry a man I did not love but who was, in the end, the only man who had ever asked.

Unlike men, women got less sentimental as we aged, I was discovering.

I will fly, alone. Wearing my own pair of goggles, my view of the world just as unique, just as wonderful, and his was, but different. Mine.

I also enjoyed praying at night for forgiveness, secure in the knowledge I'd not really done anything in need of forgiving.

Dreams may have been the paintings on my walls, but doubts and fears were the bars on my windows.

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.

Why were there so many barriers between us, always? Barriers of clothing, of etiquette, of time and age and reason.

Despite all that I had taught, I had learned nothing about the world.

At times I couldn't recognize my own words, because I was still so often afraid in my life.

For I can think of no fate drearier than sitting at home ... for the rest of my life, watching all of you go off one by one.

Would my son love me, when he was old enough to know what love meant?
p 181

Why, then, did I always feel as if his happiness was my responsibility? It wasn't fair for him to burden me with that. It had never been fair.

Still, we all found it easier to love and admire him when he was gone. The

Marriage breeds its own special brand of loneliness, and it's far more cruel. You miss more, because you've known more.

It was her style, that indefinable asset. It was said that the others had style but Babe was style.

There is always so much talk about the sins of the fathers but it is the sins of the mothers that are the most difficult to avoid repeating.

Never would I allow my size to define me. Instead I would define it.

I knew that no matter what I said, it would not be enough; when you're on the other side of the looking glass, nothing is as it seems.

The moment before he started to suspect that there were punishments for those who dared to dream so big, to fly so high.

What need was there for words, when we had just shared the sky?

I suppose at some point, we all have to decide which memories - real or otherwise - to hold on to, and which ones to let go.

Never before had I imagined leaving home, but that wasn't because of lack of desire, only lack of possibility.

All his smiles were just a little sad around the edges, as if he knew happiness never could last very long

Now there were no more stories to tell, to soothe, to comfort, to draw strangers close together; to link like hearts and minds.

Were we women always destined to appear as we were not, as long as we were standing next to our husbands?

I like to imagine the "what ifs" of history.

Wonderland was all we had in common, after all; Wonderland was what was denied the two of us. I had denied him his; he had denied me mine.