" Words, pictures, questions, and finally—dreams; it always begins with a dream, doesn’t it? Alice’s dream by the river, her head in her sister’s lap, dreaming of a rabbit, a white rabbit; my dream, also. My dreams. One of them—I remember one dream when I was small; a dream after a long walk on a summer day. A dream on a train, my head against Mr. Dodgson’s shoulder, as I dreamed of babies on flower stems; Papa walking along, crying; a man in a tall black hat, gray gloves, a stiff way about him. “May they be happy,” he whispered to me, and I smiled. "

― Melanie Benjamin , Alice I Have Been