The Personal Librarian Quotes

“The deeper we each read, the more we would understand about this world”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“I still believe. I still believe that someday there will be equality in this country. That someday there will be a new civil rights act, and a new president and Congress to enforce it. That everyone will be able to follow their dream, regardless of race. That those words about the equality of men in the Declaration of Independence will be true.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“One day, Belle, we will be able to reach back through the decades and claim you as one of our own. Your accomplishments will be part of history; they’ll show doubtful white people what colored people can do. Until that time, live your life proudly.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“Changing your name is easy. Changing your soul is impossible.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“Never apologize for intellectual curiosity or the appreciation of fine art, Miss Greene.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“being a woman, I know that I must do my job twice as well as any man to be thought half as good.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“The tie between parent and child is unbreakable, despite the sort of relationship they actually shared.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“Segregation is really just slavery by another name, lynching is one of its proponents’ weapons, and we would be subjected to segregation and threatened by lynchings if we lived as colored anywhere in this country.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“My plan is to turn the Pierpont Morgan Library from a private library into a public institution so that thousands and thousands of people will see the beauty and significance of the early written word—the importance of reading and books as a great equalizer among humankind.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“In order to assimilate with this crowd, I must be bold, daring to hide my differences in plain sight.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“I realized that to achieve one dream, you had to forsake your core identity. Changing your name is easy. Changing your soul is impossible.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“That we should not be defined by how many drops of African blood run in our veins, but”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“The rich Renaissance artwork, with its freshly hewn three-dimensionality and deep allegorical meaning, transported me away from myself and my reality to a time and place where true genius was possible, a time like and yet unlike our own. And I knew I had to help transport others in turn. That’s why I first began writing.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“The deeper we each read, the more we would understand about this world we live in, and the more questions we had.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“How could you be only hours from me and yet stay away, offering excuse after excuse? How could the man I loved - the man to whom I’d given myself - behave in this way, especially given the loss and suffering I’d just endured? How could you do this to me? The question I didn’t write, but certainly thought, was, How could I let him?”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“Together we are saving the past for the future. With my fortune and your gifted eye and hard work, we are rescuing and protecting the most beautiful and important treasures that history has to offer—those artifacts and manuscripts that memorialize the physical history of the book.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“This woman, defined by her skin, the shade of a new penny, and by the debilitating laws of segregation dividing our country and our people into two halves, seems proud that one of her own has wriggled free from the restraints still inflicted upon some, like the chains that bound our ancestors.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“They have no idea the fierceness that lurks within your petite frame.”
― Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian

“But make no mistake about it, Belle. You made yourself into the person you’ve become. He gave you the opportunity, but every bit of your success belongs to you. You are Belle da Costa Greene.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“I have learned to flirt with ease, but my visceral and intellectual reaction to this man is robbing me of my usual banter. Is it because—for once—I feel understood? It is as if I am naked before him, without the armor of wit and humor I usually wear to these occasions.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“One day, the beauty of your mind and the beauty of art will be as one, Papa had said once.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“hear racist views being bandied about in the high-society circles in which I travel. All of this makes it impossible for me to see what my father envisions.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“To be able to study and collect rare books and precious art for your life’s work. It’s a career I would have pursued if it had been open to me after Harvard. What a gift.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“educated (all of my aunts and uncles had gone to college) and hardworking (the women were all teachers and the men, all engineers). Fleets were understated in dress”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“And while he doesn’t have the power to wound me any longer, he has retained the power to spark my rage.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“Belle, all I’ve ever wanted for my children was the opportunity to soar, no matter their heritage, and to live a life of meaning. That has been my fight. But in our current society with our current laws, it’s enough that you succeed, that you are able to follow your passion in your work, that you leave a legacy that will benefit the multitudes—one day, even the colored multitudes. It breaks my heart to say it, but right now, I do not think you can have both.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“Do you still love the work? Do you feel that you’re making a valuable contribution to the world? Building a legacy that will benefit more people than just yourself, your mother, and your siblings? Does your path have meaning?”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“Death is always a harsh taskmaster, and it serves no one for me to succumb to despair.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“They were hiding in plain sight, and I knew a little about that.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian

“My romantic entanglements always end badly, and I could never stand to lose you, Belle. You mean more to me than any woman, even more than my own family most of the time. I want you at my side - as my partner, my confident, and my librarian - until the end.”
― Marie Benedict, The Personal Librarian