Melanie Benjamin Quotes

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.

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.

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

Would my son love me, when he was old enough to know what love meant?
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So now he was throwing a party. The most swellegant, elegant party evah.

Desire to know more. I hope my novel accomplishes this, and I highly recommend the following books that I found very useful: Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh's collected published diaries and books, including Gift from the Sea and The Spirit of St. Louis; A. Scott Berg's monumental biography, Lindbergh; Susan Hertog's biography, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Her Life; and Reeve Lindbergh's memoir, Under a Wing.

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

I did not want to be forgotten. More than that, I wanted, desperately - I fell to my knees and began to tear out the weeds, the vines, by their very roots - to be remembered.

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.
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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.

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

We are in receipt of numerous communications concerning the Harper's Ferry affair, and the various topics connected with it ...
We must decline to publish them all,-simply because we see no possible good which they could accomplish.

The swans swam ahead, always ahead, their bodies gliding so that none could see the effort of their feet beneath the surface, paddling, moving, propelling them forward, forward, to that beautiful spot far ahead, an incandescent curtain of light, a shower of moonbeams, a heavenly constellation of stars.

Party of the Century by Deborah Davis, about Truman Capote's famous Black and White Ball. Capote by Gerald Clarke. Truman Capote by George Plimpton. Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. by Sam Wasson. Slim, the memoir of Slim Keith. And The Sisters by David Grafton, about Babe Paley and her sisters.

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

Babe Paley simply never made an empty gesture, and here she was, assembling a parade of them. But her feet, her hands, her mind, her heart, were all restless. Truman.

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.

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.

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.

I certainly incorporate facts into my fiction. I take the basic facts from the life of my subject and I pick and choose what to use to construct a really interesting novel. I don't let facts get in the way of my imagination and my exploration of the subject's emotions and relationships.

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

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

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.

My intellect, my wit - I'd forgotten I'd even possessed them, and they were dull and neglected, to be sure. But in the company of others who prized thought over action, laughter over brooding, they blossomed and sharpened. My tongue fairly tripped with sparkling phrases, insightful comments.

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

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

Days are very mysterious things, of course. Sometimes they fly by, and other times they seem to last forever yet they are all exactly twenty-four hours.

I see things beyond what other people see. I am always looking for hidden corners and closets of a life that I feel aren't explored either by the person who lived it or the people writing about it.

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

That's just it, don't you see? I don't want to be taken care of! I don't want be hidden away, a burden! I want to make my own way! To have a greater purpose!'

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.

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

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.

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.

she knew the effort it took to keep one's exterior self together, upright, when everything inside was in pieces, broken beyond repair. One touch, one warm, compassionate hand, could shatter that hard-won perfect exterior. And then it would take years and years to restore it. So

I saw myself through her eyes, I saw myself through Charles's eyes, always; I never looked into a mirror and saw myself through my own. So I did, one evening after a couple of glasses of Dubonnet.

And this was the greatest gift that aviation could ever give me; not the sense of freedom but the sense of permanence, coupling, of being absolutely worthy, absolutely necessary to the one person in the world who hadn't needed anyone. Before.

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?

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.

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

No, this was the career I wanted; a writer could be employed for as long as she could hold a pencil; for as long as her mind still held out. But an actress - even an actress like Mary - had a fleeting shelf life.

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.

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

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

Yet motherhood had brought me down to earth with a thud, and kept me there with tentacles made of diapers and tears and lullabies and phone calls and car pools and the sticky residue of hair spray and Barbasol all over the bathroom counter. Would i ever be able to soar again? Would I ever have the courage? Did any woman? Or did we exist only as others saw us?...I saw myself through her (my daughter's) eyes, I saw myself through Charles's eyes, always; I never looked into a mirror and saw myself through my own.

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.

Both black and gleaming, ostentatiously so. I was acutely aware of our luggage piling up on the platform, matching and initialed and gleaming with comfortable wealth. I couldn't help but

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.

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.

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.

The New York of the plays, the movies, the books; the New York of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair and Vogue. It was a beacon, a spire, a beacon on top of a spire. A light, always glowing from afar, visible even from the cornfields of Iowa, the foothills of the Dakotas, the deserts of California. The swamps of Louisiana. Beckoning, always beckoning. Summoning the discontented, seducing the dreamers. Those whose blood ran too hot, and too quickly, causing them to look about at their placid families, their staid neighbors, the graves of their slumbering ancestors and say - I'm different. I'm special. I'm more. They all came to New York.

How does one know that, before the first hello? It's a heaviness in the air combined with a lightness of step. It's a slowing down of the past, and a speeding up of the future.

Just when had I become so self-absorbed? I was a form of self-preservation, I realized now; I had resolved that ... I could survive Colonel Wood's cruelty if my heart, my mind, had shrunk to a size designed to absorb my own troubles only.

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

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.

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.

Stuyvesants and Vanderbilts and Roosevelts and staid, respectable Washington Square. Trinity Church. Mrs. Astor's famous ballroom, the Four Hundred, snobby Ward McAllister, that traitor Edith Wharton, Delmonico's. Zany Zelda and Scott in the Plaza fountain, the Algonquin Round Table, Dottie Parker and her razor tongue and pen, the Follies. Cholly Knickerbocker, 21, Lucky Strike dances at the Stork, El Morocco. The incomparable Hildegarde playing the Persian Room at the Plaza, Cary Grant kneeling at her feet in awe. Fifth Avenue: Henri Bendel, Bergdorf's, Tiffany's.

The girls we'd believed to have been lost in the haze of regret and recrimination that comes with surviving in the unscrupulous business; this unjust world. But it turned out they'd been here all along, these two; caught forever in a shared moment, preserved together in a silver frame.

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

He appreciated it, to a point. He also had no intention of having a second marriage like his first, a marriage in which the wife taught the husband, and didn't care who knew it; in fact, took pains to let others see how much she had taught him, how much more she knew about art and politics and all the rest. That had been Dorothy Hearst Paley's fatal flaw, one she recognized too late. Babe

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

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.

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.