Quotes from The Aviator's Wife

“Mother shook her head impatiently. 'You need to...stop looking for heroes, Anne.' Her speech was slow, slurred, but understandable. 'Only the weak need...heroes...and heroes need...those around them to remain weak. You're...not weak.' I remembered those words. I knew they were true, all of them. True about me, and true about Charles. I brought them out, every now and then, as I kept working -- on both the manuscript and myself. And, perhaps on my definition of my marriage. No, my prayer for my marriage; a marriage of two equals. With separate -- but equally valid -- views of the world; shared goggles no more, but looking at the same scenery, at the same time.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Marriage breeds its own special brand of loneliness, and it’s far more cruel. You miss more, because you’ve known more.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“JEALOUSY IS A TERRIBLE THING. It keeps you up at night, it demands tremendous energy in order to remain alive, and so you have to want to feed it, nurture it—and by so wanting, you have to acknowledge that you are a bitter, petty person. It changes you. It changes the way you view the world; minor irritations become major catastrophes; celebrations become trials.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“dreams may have been the paintings on my walls, but doubts and fears were the bars on my windows.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Only the weak need … heroes … and heroes need … those around them to remain weak.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Dana taught me that the ability to grieve deeply also meant that a person had the capacity to love deeply, laugh deeply, live deeply -- and that this was a capacity to be cherished.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

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

p 364”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Who was this woman before me, her face imprinted with the expectations of others? I was Mom. I was Wife. I was Tragedy. I was Pilot. They all were me, and I, them. That was a fate we could not escape, we women; we would always be called upon by others in a way men simply never were. But weren't we always, first and foremost -- woman? Wasn't there strength in that, victory, clarity -- in all the stages of a woman's life?”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Unlike men, women got less sintimental as we aged, I was discovering. We cried enough, when we were young; vessels overflowing with the tears of everyone we loved.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“... afraid of everything because nothing truly terrible had happened to me, yet.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“A woman's life, always changing, accommodating, then shedding, old duties for new; one person's expectations for another until finally, victoriously, emerging stronger. Complete.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Only the weak need... heroes... and heroes need... those around them to remain weak. You're not weak.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“At the age of twenty-five, he had conquered not only the entire planet but all the sky above it.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“His eyes were so blue as to be startling; I decided I’d never seen blue eyes before, until that moment. They were the color of morning, the color of the ocean; the color of the sky.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“My stomach was so full of butterflies and other insects with busy, brushing wings—entirely appropriate under the circumstances, I couldn’t help but think!—that I could hardly fall asleep. And when at last I did, I know I slept lightly. As if I remembered, even in my slumber, that I had a dream beneath my pillow that I did not wish to crush.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“What need was there for words, when we had just shared the sky?”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Now and adult, allowed a glimpse of these first cracks in my family's perfect surface, I couldn't help but wonder what else I didn't understand about us all.

p 60”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Were we women always destined to appear as we were not, as long as we were standing next to our husbands?”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

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

p 181”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Unlike men, women got less sentimental as we aged, I was discovering.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“But it was never over for me; I never quite found my way out. Sorrow was my constant companion, even though I no longer wept. It was the shadow that followed me on sunny days, the weight pressing down upon my spirits on cloudy ones.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“And I knew, as I had always known but somehow forgotten to remember in these past years, that I could never have done it, that no one else could ever have done it. That I would never know anyone as brave, as astonishing -- as frustrating, too, but that was, I was forced to admit finally, part of his charm -- as the slightly stooped elderly gentleman standing beside me in the shadows, listening while schoolchildren read of his exploits. The man who was, for better, for worse, my husband. The man who I loved, in spite of himself.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“reverently that I knew it was a part of him in a way, it turned out, I could never be.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“pray to the God of my childhood that”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“were, the dangers, and the importance”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“That was the first time I realized my life was no longer my own.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Unlike men who needed approval, he didn’t speak loudly or use hyperbole. He simply was.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

“Suddenly my mood shifted, as it always seemed to do whenever I was with my family. Away from them, I could be confident, almost careless, with my words and ideas.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife

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