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Alice I Have Been QUOTES

Alice I Have Been QUOTES

1 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

2 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

3 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

4 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

5 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

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

― Melanie Benjamin , Alice I Have Been

7 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

8 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

9 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

10 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

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

― Melanie Benjamin , Alice I Have Been

12 " he was in his grave, alone. Somewhere I could not be. "

― Melanie Benjamin , Alice I Have Been

13 " Yet somehow, I could not find it in my heart to pity Mr. Ruskin. I could never convince myself of the sincerity of his emotions; he was too eager to draw on every aspect of his life, no matter how tragic, as a means to further his fame. "

― Melanie Benjamin , Alice I Have Been

14 " You mustn't be afraid,' I said impulsively, wondering how often he was; aching because I could never be there for him in his darkest moments. "

― Melanie Benjamin , Alice I Have Been

15 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

16 " the Germans all hate the Kaiser and there’ll most likely be a civil war, instead. "

― Melanie Benjamin , Alice I Have Been

17 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

18 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

19 " 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 , Alice I Have Been

20 " 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 , Alice I Have Been