47 Quotes by Melanie Benjamin

When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn’t planned.

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 like to imagine the “what ifs” of history.

Sorrow was my constant companion, even though I no longer wept. It was the shadow that followed me on sunny days, the weight pressing down upon my spirits on cloudy ones.

Why were there so many barriers between us, always? Barriers of clothing, of etiquette, of time and age and reason.

What very mysterious things days were. Sometimes they fly by, and other times they seem to last forever, yet they are all exactly twenty-four hours. There’s quite a lot we don’t know about them.

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.

I see things beyond what other people see. I am always looking for hidden corners and closets of a life that I feel aren’t explored either by the person who lived it or the people writing about it.

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.