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

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

Now and adult, allowed a glimpse of these first cracks in my family's perfect surface, I couldn't help but wonder what else I didn't understand about us all.p 60

— Melanie Benjamin

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

So I still like to see you, my friend. I still like to sit in La Cote Basque and sip wine and eat fine food and indulge in our memories—the good ones, the ones we want to remember. So let’s do that. That’s the story we can tell ourselves, at night when we can’t sleep. We can tell ourselves that there is one other person in the world who sees it in the same way, who remembers. Who remembers her. Babe. And Gloria. And even Truman, I guess, as he was, back then. Our fun, gossipy friend. Our entrée into a different world, for a time. An amusing, brief little time. A time before it was fashionable to tell the truth, and the world grew sordid from too much honesty.

— Melanie Benjamin

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

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

Would my son love me, when he was old enough to know what love meant?p 181

— Melanie Benjamin