“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“I had wanted to live forever as a gypsy girl; I had wanted to live forever as a child, tumbling down a rabbit hole. I had been granted both wishes, only to find immortality was not what it had promised to be; instead of a passport to the future, it was a yoke that bound me to the past.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“Why were there so many barriers between us, always? Barriers of clothing, of etiquette, of time and age and reason.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“My head grew muddled with it all; the silly ways adults acted with one another, never saying what they meant, trusting in sighs and glances and distance to speak for them instead. How dangerous that was! How easy it must be to misinterpret a sigh or a look.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“There was something about his eyes—the color of the periwinkle that grew at the base of the trees in the Meadow, such a deep blue—that made me feel as if he could see my dearest wishes, my darkest thoughts, before they made themselves known to me. And that simply by seeing them, he was also giving me permission to follow them. Perhaps he was even showing me the way.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“His death notice included the mention that in 1880, he had married Alice in Wonderland. I like to think he would have been pleased at that, but the truth is he was the only one to whom this didn't matter at all.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“...all his smiles were just a little sad around the edges, as if he knew happiness never could last very long”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“the Germans all hate the Kaiser and there’ll most likely be a civil war, instead.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“When I was six, I had known nothing. Now that I was seven, however, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how very wise I was growing.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“I had the foresight to pick up a shard of china—the faded pink china bow of the shepherdess’s apron—and plant it in Ina’s shoe that night, hoping to incriminate her instead, I did not fool Mamma.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“why Phoebe always dipped her food into tea before she ate it (she said she had soft teeth and didn’t want to lose them before she got too old to catch a husband).”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“My head grew muddled with it all; the silly ways adults acted with one another, never saying what they meant, trusting in sighs and glances and distance to speak for them instead. How dangerous that was! How easy it must be to misinterpret a sigh or a look. I was quite sure I’d never get it right when it came my time to grow up. Fortunately, that was a long way off. Unlike Ina, I was in no hurry to learn that particular, peculiar language.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“they’re pearls. And as such, should only be auctioned off to the highest bidder.” Now I was very confused. Only slaves were auctioned, and they had been outlawed long ago;”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“She took the letters, and she threw them in the nursery hearth, stirring them up, ripping them with the poker, all the while crying and saying things I could not understand. “You wicked, wicked girl! That horrible man! You’re ruined, that’s what! Ruined! No one will ever have you now!”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“I ran after her, pulling at her arm; this felt like a violation more than anything else. “You can’t read my letters! You have no right!”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“I listened to them ruin Mr. Dodgson for me—for us—forever. They called him horrible names; they begged Papa to dismiss him from the college.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“And this—instead of happiness—would be only what the two of us deserved, after all.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“There had been so many of them, so pale and thin and dirty, but Mamma had said we weren’t to feel sorry for them. They knew their place.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“as the second hand continued to go around again and again; it would never stop, they would never stop coming, all the hours and days and years I would have to live without my dear boy,”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“I held my breath—but the pain was worse, jagged edges of glass ripping my heart apart,”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“he was in his grave, alone. Somewhere I could not be.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“What I did not know was that I loved him, too. That was what I had found, what had been there all the time; how stupid, how selfish I had been, not to see it.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“Pray remember, Alice—love isn’t all. There is family, and education, and potential. Also property, of course.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
Melanie Benjamin
Born place: Indianapolis
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“I became disenchanted. My first impression, that of finding myself part of a fearless battle, passed. The trepidation at every exam and the joy of passing it with the highest marks had faded. Gone was the pleasure of re-educating my voice, my gestures, my way of dressing and walking, as if I were competing for the prize of best disguise, the mask worn so well that it was almost a face.”
― quote from The Story of a New Name
“Life is not so simple. There are many futures. The life of a single person is like a great tree: every branch, every twig, every leaf is a possible future.”
― David Gemmell, quote from Lion of Macedon
“[Peabody:] "Bite me."
Though Eve managed to swallow a chuckle at her aide's use of her own standard response to annoyances, she didn't quite make it over McNab's cheerful, "Where?”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Holiday in Death
“No name. No memory today of yesterday’s name; of today’s name, tomorrow. If the name is the thing; if a name in us is the concept of every thing placed outside of us; and without a name you don’t have the concept, and the thing remains in us as if blind, indistinct and undefined: well then, let each carve this name that I bore among men, a funeral epigraph, on the brow of that image in which I appeared to him, and then leave it in peace, and let there be no more talk about it. It is fitting for the dead. For those who have concluded. I am alive and I do not conclude. Life does not conclude. And life knows nothing of names. This tree, tremulous pulse of new leaves. I am this tree. Tree, cloud; tomorrow book or wind: the book I read, the wind I drink. All outside, wandering.”
― Luigi Pirandello, quote from One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
“How else can hopes go but up?”
― Cynthia Lord, quote from Rules
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Earth Sentinels: The...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
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