The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb Quotes

“Never would I allow my size to define me. Instead I would define it.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“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!' ”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“Never before had I imagined leaving home, but that wasn't because of lack of desire, only lack of possibility.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“...'it's not that you are too small, my little chick,but rather that the world is too big.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“My dear, simple little sister! Every mood so fleeting, yet so obvious; there was no mystery to Minnie, none at all. She loved whom she knew, distrusted everyone else, and shared her emotions, her thoughts, as freely as they occurred to her.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“Despite all that I had taught, I had learned nothing about the world.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“Never would I allow my size to define me. Instead, I would define it. My size may have been the first thing people noticed about me but never, I vowed at that moment, would it be the last.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“I am not your friend, not your doll, not your playmate. I am your teacher and will expect every consideration, every show of respect, that my position demands.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“this novel, I truly came to see the United States as a major character, one that starts out a bit naïve but grows up alongside Vinnie, ever optimistic, ever expanding, sometimes learning from the past but more often not. I think these photographs are a kind of family scrapbook of our nation during its youth!”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“by my tenth birthday I reached only twenty-four inches and weighed twenty pounds.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“No, God saw fit to bestow upon me the lamentable name of Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“Yet for all I could see, nothing was as grand as how I’d imagined it. Nothing was as big as my dreams.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“She lifted me up so that my face was level with hers. And then we turned to look at the world.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“In 1885 she remarried—to another little person, Count Primo Magri of Italy”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“But when we were introduced as “General and Mrs. Tom Thumb, those beloved Lilliputians!” we were not alone; this was not our show.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“I could not bear to think that there was somewhere I had never been, someone who might not know my name.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“I had an intense desire for him not to see me as just another woman”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“Happy Family,” where, in the same cage, a lion, a tiger, a lamb, and assorted birds all lived together in apparent harmony. (Although Mr. Barnum confessed that the exhibit could continue only as long as he had a fresh supply of lambs and birds!)”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“For nowhere else on earth had there ever been such an assemblage of novelties, animals, music, culture, science, and entertainment all in one place.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“so tall I couldn’t see the tops of some of them—four and five stories tall, imagine!”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“Mr. Charles Stratton himself. Or as you may know him, Tom Thumb,”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“Prevention powders,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’re so little, Vinnie, I don’t know what to tell you to do so that it don’t hurt. But you oughtn’t to be havin’ babies, so use these.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“You’re not looking at it right, Vinnie. It’s as beautiful as a fairy, all green and shimmery.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“she might be just one example of God’s unexplainable whims, or fancies.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“explained that I represented “an excellent example of Nature’s Occasional Mistakes.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

“Who, when having been already blessed with three children, still has the time or interest to pay much attention to the fourth?”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb