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Melanie Benjamin

Melanie Benjamin Books

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“So I still like to see you, my friend. I still like to sit in La Côte 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.”

MemoriesHonestyNew YorkTruman Capote
Book:The Swans of Fifth Avenue
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“TELL ME—WHA T IS YOUR greatest fear? There was a long silence. No sounds but the low hum of the pool filter, the faraway grazing of a lawn mower, and the determined clip clip of a gardener on the other side of some tall azalea bushes, trimming away. “That someone will see,” Babe whispered, while at the same time, Truman murmured, “That someone will find me out." “That no one will love me,” Truman added after another moment. While at the same time, Babe admitted, “And that I’ll never be loved, truly.”

Fear
Book:The Swans of Fifth Avenue
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“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.”

TruthNew YorkNostalgia1960sThe Past
Book:The Swans of Fifth Avenue
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“The blizzard, created when an enormous trough of cold air rushing in from the Arctic had met up with an equally enormous influx of warm, wet air from the gulf, gobbled up everything in its path. The collision generated a force of energy no one could remember seeing in their lifetimes, but that all would talk about with wonder until the day they died.”

StormSnowBlizzard1888Children S BlizzardSchoolhouse Blizzard
Book:The Children's Blizzard
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