Alice I Have Been Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“...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

“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

“he was in his grave, alone. Somewhere I could not be.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“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

“Words, pictures, questions, and finally—dreams; it always begins with a dream, doesn’t it? Alice’s dream by the river, her head in her sister’s lap, dreaming of a rabbit, a white rabbit; my dream, also. My dreams. One of them—I remember one dream when I was small; a dream after a long walk on a summer day. A dream on a train, my head against Mr. Dodgson’s shoulder, as I dreamed of babies on flower stems; Papa walking along, crying; a man in a tall black hat, gray gloves, a stiff way about him. “May they be happy,” he whispered to me, and I smiled.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“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. I’m sure I haven’t quite gotten the knack of it myself. But soon, perhaps. Perhaps, soon.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“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

“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

“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

“And this—instead of happiness—would be only what the two of us deserved, after all.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“I listened to them ruin Mr. Dodgson for me—for us—forever. They called him horrible names; they begged Papa to dismiss him from the college.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“I ran after her, pulling at her arm; this felt like a violation more than anything else. “You can’t read my letters! You have no right!”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“She took the letters, and she threw them in the nursery hearth, stirring them up, ripping them with the poker, all the while crying and saying things I could not understand. “You wicked, wicked girl! That horrible man! You’re ruined, that’s what! Ruined! No one will ever have you now!”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“There is always so much talk about the sins of the fathers, but it is the sins of the mothers that are the most difficult to avoid repeating.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“What I did not know was that I loved him, too. That was what I had found, what had been there all the time; how stupid, how selfish I had been, not to see it.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“I held my breath—but the pain was worse, jagged edges of glass ripping my heart apart,”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“as the second hand continued to go around again and again; it would never stop, they would never stop coming, all the hours and days and years I would have to live without my dear boy,”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“the Germans all hate the Kaiser and there’ll most likely be a civil war, instead.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“Pray remember, Alice—love isn’t all. There is family, and education, and potential. Also property, of course.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“There had been so many of them, so pale and thin and dirty, but Mamma had said we weren’t to feel sorry for them. They knew their place.”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“they’re pearls. And as such, should only be auctioned off to the highest bidder.” Now I was very confused. Only slaves were auctioned, and they had been outlawed long ago;”
― Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

“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