The Swans of Fifth Avenue Quotes

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Sit up straight.” “Don’t fidget.” “Write a thank-you note the minute you receive a gift or return home from a party.” “Always have fresh flowers, no matter the cost.” “Clean gloves and shoes are the sign of a lady.” “Never let the help get the upper hand.” “Be discreet.” “Be above gossip.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“I understand, Bill. Because I tell myself a lot of stories to help me sleep at night. Stories about how Babe was my dearest friend, and I never betrayed her. Stories about how you and I had a great love, not just an occasional roll in the hay whenever she was out of town. Stories about how wonderful life was back then, when none of us told each other the truth, but so what? It was all so beautiful, wasn’t it? It was all so lovely and gracious. Not like it is now.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“old-fashioned flowers, it looked like an English garden.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“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.

This tiny, effeminate creature dressed in velvet suits, red socks, an absurdly long scarf usually wrapped around his throat, trailing after him like a coronation robe.

He who pronounced, after dinner, “I’m going to go sit over here with the rest of the girls and gossip!” This pixie who might suddenly leap into the air, kicking one foot out behind him, exclaiming, “Oh, what fun, fun, fun it is to be me! I’m beside myself!”

“Truman, you could charm the rattle off a snake,” Diana Vreeland pronounced.

Hemingway - He was so muskily, powerfully masculine. More than any other man she’d met, and that was saying something when Clark Gable was a notch in your belt. So it was that, and his brain, his heart—poetic, sad, boyish, angry—that drew her. And he wanted her. Slim could see it in his hungry eyes, voraciously taking her in, no matter how many times a day he saw her; each time was like the first time after a wrenching separation.

How to soothe and flatter and caress and purr and then ignore, just when the flattering and caressing got to be a bit too much.

Modesty bores me. I hate people who act coy. Just come right out and say it, if you believe it—I’m the greatest. I’m the cat’s pajamas. I’m it!

He couldn’t humiliate her vulnerability, her despair.

Old habits die hard. Particularly among the wealthy. And the storytellers, gossips, and snakes.

Is it truly a scandal? A divine, delicious literary scandal, just like in the good old days of Hemingway and Fitzgerald?

The loss of trust, the loss of joy; the loss of herself. The loss of her true heart.

An amusing, brief little time. A time before it was fashionable to tell the truth, and the world grew sordid from too much honesty.

In the end as in the beginning, all they had were the stories. The stories they told about one another, and the stories they told to themselves.

Beauty. Beauty in all its glory, in all its iterations; the exquisite moment of perfect understanding between two lonely, damaged souls, sitting silently by a pool, or in the twilight, or lying in bed, vulnerable and naked in every way that mattered. The haunting glance of a woman who knew she was beautiful because of how she saw herself reflected in her friend’s eyes. The splendor of belonging, being included, prized, coveted.

What happened to Truman Capote. What happened to his swans. What happened to elegance. What truly was the price they paid, for the lives they lived. For there is always a price. Especially in fairy tales.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“God, it was tiring, wasn’t it, how these things took roost and never, ever left? Like squatters. Yes. The traumas of childhood were like squatters. They took advantage of negligence, weakness, until the point where you couldn’t imagine your life being whole without them.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Babe was newly divorced from a Tuxedo Park blueblood (who had hit her on occasion, but that was what makeup was for, Gogs had sternly reminded her when Babe came running home for comfort; funny, though, how vehemently her mother argued for divorce after the blueblood revealed all his money was tied up in trust).”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“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”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Now there were no more stories to tell, to soothe, to comfort, to draw strangers close together; to link like hearts and minds.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“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.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“It was her style, that indefinable asset. It was said that the others had style but Babe was style.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“TELL ME—WHA T IS YOUR greatest fear?

There was a long silence. No sounds but the low hum of the pool filter, the faraway grazing of a lawn mower, and the determined clip clip of a gardener on the other side of some tall azalea bushes, trimming away.

“That someone will see,” Babe whispered, while at the same time, Truman murmured, “That someone will find me out."

“That no one will love me,” Truman added after another moment.

While at the same time, Babe admitted, “And that I’ll never be loved, truly.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Beauty. Beauty in all its glory, in all its iterations; the exquisite moment of perfect understanding between two lonely, damaged souls, sitting silently by a pool, or in the twilight, or lying in bed, vulnerable and naked in every way that mattered. The haunting glance of a woman who knew she was beautiful because of how she saw herself reflected in her friend’s eyes. The splendor of belonging, being included, prized, coveted.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t hers. It was simply the universe, deciding to tear them apart, like all great lovers. Romeo and Juliet. Tristan and Isolde. Truman and Babe.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Like so many, they chose not to recognize themselves in the mirror, but in old photographs, scrapbooks, shared memories.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“The ugliness had always been there, he knew; didn’t he know it better than anyone? The stories behind the stories; the bargains and sacrifices he had made, that his swans had made, all of them, throughout their lives. The sordidness they were so determined to hide from the world;”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Strange, she mused, transfixed by the ghastly, yet oddly innocently compelling, visage gazing back. You come into this world alone, toothless, hairless. And that’s how you leave this world.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“How funny. Being thin when one is healthy is an accomplishment. But when one is sick, it’s something else altogether.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Truman had gone global; he was everywhere and nowhere, peripatetic. He was in Rome, he was in Switzerland, he was in Palm Springs, he was in Venice. He was on the cover of Time, he was writing articles for Rolling Stone. He was dropping acid with The Who.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“And then Truman leapt into their midst, and suddenly the gossip was more delicious, the amusements more diverse. He had sat on the beds of every one of his swans and whispered how beautiful she was, how precious, how devoted he was to her and her alone, and even though they all knew he was saying the same thing to each one of them, they didn’t mind. Because, beneath the beauty, they were all so goddamned lonely.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Yet at night, they took off the diamonds and gowns and went to empty beds resigned to the fact that they were just women, after all. Women with a shelf life.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“She looked down at him; his mouth was open, his pink cheeks slack as he snored softly. So she whispered, “And, Truman? Bill can’t hurt me anymore. My children can’t, either. But you—you could. You’re the only person in my life with that power. I don’t know how you could, but it’s true. And I’m afraid of that. Only a little. I’m also happy, because it means I do love you, truly.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“FRANK SINATRA WAS PISSED.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Growing old was simply hell.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“But a killer could be an artist, he discovered. And an artist a killer.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Truman knew he had a fascination for the ordinary that almost overshadowed his fascination with the rich and famous.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Now that she had read this book, this book by someone else, not her confidant, not her soul mate. This was a book written by a man—and she had ceased to think of Truman as that. He had become an extension of herself: her analyst, her pillow, her sleeping pill at night, her coffee in the morning.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue