“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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“Philippa Somerville was annoyed. To her friends the Nixons, who owned Liddel Keep, and with whom Kate had deposited her for one night, she had given an accurate description of Sir William Scott of Kincurd, his height, his skill, his status, and his general suitability as an escort for Philippa Somerville from Liddesdale to Midculter Castle. And the said William Scott had not turned up. She fumed all the morning of that fine first day of May, and by afternoon was driven to revealing her general dissatisfaction with Scotland, the boring nature of Joleta, her extreme dislike of one of the Crawfords and the variable and unreliable nature of the said William Scott. She agreed that the Dowager Lady Culter was adorable, and Mariotta nice, and that she liked the baby.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights
“This is the kind of room poets are supposed to work in, the kind of room that threatens to break your spirit and forces you into constant battle with yourself.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible
“I am so sorry. I wish you knew even one tenth of one percent of how sorry I am. ...It was my fault. Can I kill myself here, or should I do it outside, so the mess on your carpet doesn't upset your mother?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Twisted
“It's hard to have a serious conversation with you when you're wearin' lighted cocks on your head."
AJ defiantly thrust out her chin and the penises bobbled. "We aren't having a conversation. You're give me tough-guy attitude. If you won't acknowledge me in public, you don't have the right to chastise me for anything I do in public or in private. And now you lost the right to do anything to me in private either, bucko."
"Quit bein' so goddamm childish."
Her eyes narrowed to silver slits. "Quit bein' such a goddamn dickhead."
"You're the one with dicks on your head, baby doll."
"Yeah? I can take mine off any old time I please, but you wear your dickhead like a second skin. Or should I say as a second foreskin?”
― Lorelei James, quote from Cowgirl Up and Ride
“He would dream waking dreams about Jesus, gloriously childlike. He fancied he came down every now and then to see how things were going in the lower part of his kingdom; and that when he did so, he made use of Glashgar and its rocks for his stair, coming down its granite scale in the morning, and again, when he had ended his visit, going up in the evening by the same steps. Then high and fast would his heart beat at the thought that some day he might come upon his path just when he had passed, see the heather lifting its head from the trail of his garment, or more slowly out of the prints left by his feet, as he walked up the stairs of heaven, going back to his Father. Sometimes, when a sheep stopped feeding and looked up suddenly, he would fancy that Jesus had laid his hand on its head, and was now telling it that it must not mind being killed; for he had been killed, and it was all right.”
― George MacDonald, quote from Sir Gibbie
The Tournament
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The Bone Witch
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