Mistress of the Ritz Quotes

“They are in danger of becoming immune to the horrors surrounding them. This is what an occupation does—it wears you down until you accept evil. Until you can no longer fully define it, even. Let alone recognize it.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“People do that, of course—they come into your life, illuminate some dark corner you’d not even known was there, then they disappear. True connection is rare, but that’s just the way it is.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“Marriage is not defined by what we hope to gain, but by what we are willing to sacrifice.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“It is devastating to see a loved one suffer; it is harder to bear than your own pain. Love is despair, love is delight. Love is fear, love is hope. Love is mercy. Love is anger.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“Perhaps he simply needs to mark their existence by noting their absence.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“And he began to comprehend, then, how murky it all was going to be; how many choices Parisians were going to have to make on a daily basis, questions they would have to ask themselves that had no correct answers. Yet if you blundered, if you made the wrong choice, you would likely be thrown in prison for a few days. Or worse. And if you made what appeared to be the right decision for now, how would you be held accountable for it in the future?”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“love must be sweeter, when death is so close you can touch it.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“Claude. It is devastating to see a loved one suffer; it is harder to bear than your own pain. Love is despair, love is delight. Love is fear, love is hope. Love is mercy. Love is anger.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“And these two who had battled, who had raged, who began with a passion so fierce and heady that it blinded them for years—suddenly, they treated each other as old married couples do: with tenderness, with exasperation, but always with love, polished over time so that the rough edges were no longer visible and only the smooth patina showed.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“A man had a career, while a woman could only have a hobby.

Now that the Great War had destroyed so many fragile empires, displaced minor European royalty roamed the earth like the dinosaurs that they were. And many lumbered into the Ritz.

It is not profitable to long too much for the past, particularly if it is not your own.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“Now that the Great War had destroyed so many fragile empires, displaced minor European royalty roamed the earth like the dinosaurs that they were. And many lumbered into the Ritz.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“But it is not profitable to long too much for the past, particularly if it is not your own.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“Because we're saps. We're women in a man's world. We're stupid enough to believe that the right man will make us forget that.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“And what, exactly, is the Resistance? It isn't a defined group of people, not as some would believe; there is no official insignia, no membership dues. It is more amorphous, popping up now here, now there. Some people who never held a gun are part of it. It is at once cerebral, engaged in false diplomacy, and bloodily violent, intent on blowing up bridges and entire regiments of Nazis. It is more of a mood than an action, Claude sometimes believes; if you do something, however small, to make their "guests" squirm, feel unwelcome, or in danger of their lives, you are resisting.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“Because the Ritz had seduced her from her very first step inside.

As it seduces everyone. It whispers your name in a satin cares, it shows you unimaginable treasures - the tapestries on the walls should be in an art museum - it seduces you into thinking, even if you haven't a sou in your pocket, that simply by rubbing elbows with the barons and duchesses and movie stars and heiresses who glide through the halls on the wings of fortune, you, too, are something special.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz

“This is what an occupation does—it wears you down until you accept evil. Until you can no longer fully define it, even. Let alone recognize it.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Mistress of the Ritz