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The Aviator's Wife QUOTES

The Aviator's Wife QUOTES

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

p 181 "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife

2 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

3 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

4 " Only the weak need … heroes … and heroes need … those around them to remain weak. "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife

5 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

6 " dreams may have been the paintings on my walls, but doubts and fears were the bars on my windows. "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife

7 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

8 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

9 " Marriage breeds its own special brand of loneliness, and it’s far more cruel. You miss more, because you’ve known more. "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife

10 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

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

p 364 "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife

12 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

13 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

14 " ... afraid of everything because nothing truly terrible had happened to me, yet. "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife

15 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

16 " For despite the pain of loss, as time went on, the memory of those I'd loved warmed my heart more than grieved it. "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife

17 " Were we women always destined to appear as we were not, as long as we were standing next to our husbands? "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife

18 " Only the weak need... heroes... and heroes need... those around them to remain weak. You're not weak. "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife

19 " 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 , The Aviator's Wife

20 " 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. "

― Melanie Benjamin , The Aviator's Wife