Stephanie Dray > Quotes

“And I reminded myself that a woman should be able to dress as she liked without a man hurting her...”
― Stephanie Dray, Song of the Nile

“I’ll tell you a secret about being happy, Tom. Sometimes you just have to pretend at it until it becomes real.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Selene’s life is a lesson to us that the trajectory of women’s equality hasn’t always been a forward march. In some ways the ancients were more advanced than we are today; there have been setbacks before and may be more in the future.”
― Stephanie Dray, Lily of the Nile

“But the measure of a man, of a life, of a union of man and wife or even country is not in the falling. It’s in the rising back up again to repair what’s broken, to put right what’s wrong. Your father and I did that. We always did that. He never stopped trying until the day he died. And neither will I.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton: Wife, Widow, and Warrior in Alexander Hamilton’s Quest for a More Perfect Union

“Kings and queens cry with family. Hide your grief from subjects and strangers.”
― Stephanie Dray, Lily of the Nile

“They'll try to make you forget who you are or try to make you ashamed. But you mustn't forget and you mustn't be ashamed.”
― Stephanie Dray, Lily of the Nile

“Why was it that women were expected to restrain our every passion for the sake of propriety, but men couldn't do it even for the sake of the women they loved?”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Because the people we love are not entirely knowable. Even to themselves. But we love them anyway.

The only other choice is to live without love, alone.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“Silence is often the only weapon available to ladies. And I wield mine expertly.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“But I think it better, in times like these, for us to acknowledge that marriage is a choice, one made, every day, anew.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“The curves of his smile become the waves in my ocean.”
― Stephanie Dray, Daughters of the Nile

“The opposite of love, I thought, was not hatred, but indifference, and for my own survival, I’d made my heart indifferent to Alexander Hamilton.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“I never was a beauty. It was only that, until a few days ago, Alexander had made me feel like one.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“When the heart finds its one true desire, any separation and delay is unbearable.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“They'd murdered my husband. They'd taken him from me. But I still had his words, and they were my solace. Hamilton could still speak to me through those pages. His love letters. His Ideas. His essays. Thousands of pages.
They could kill him, but they couldn't silence him. Not if his story was told. Not if his work was preserved. And I resolved to collect the pieces of the legacy Alexander left behind.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton

“I now saw union between man and woman was the same as union among the states—as a series of debates and compromises that might hold it all together for a few more years, or end in a painful separation.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“From tattered flags and uniforms to friendships strained to the brink, the women of my country had always been the menders to all the things torn asunder.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“I had come to Rome in chains, but I would leave Rome a queen.”
― Stephanie Dray, Lily of the Nile

“A marriage is like a union of states, requiring countless dinner table bargains to hold it together. There may be irreconcilable differences brewing below the surface that can come to open rupture. And there is, in a marriage, as in a nation, a certain amount of storytelling we do to make it understood. Even if those stories we tell to make our marriage, or country, work don't paint the whole picture, they're still true. But to leave Alexander Hamilton out of the painting entirely is a lie.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton

“Because words were his weapon; silence was mine. And he couldn’t win an argument if I didn’t start one.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“There are only three kinds of ink that rulers use to write their stories. Sweat, blood, or tears. So choose your ink carefully, because one day Anubis will weigh your heart upon on a scale. If your heart is black and heavy with sin, it will go to the crocodiles in the hour of judgment. But if you’re faithful, Isis offers immortality.”
― Stephanie Dray, Lily of the Nile

“I was someone before I met Alexander Hamilton.
Not someone famous or important or with a learned philosophical understanding of all that was at stake in our revolution. Not a warrior or a philosopher or statesman.
But I was a patriot.
I was no unformed skein of wool for Hamilton to weave together into any tapestry he wished. That's important for me to remember now, when every thread of my life has become tangled with everything he was. Important, I think, in sorting out what can be forgiven, to remember my own experiences - the ones filled with my own yearnings that had nothing to do with him.
I was, long before he came into my life, a young woman struggling to understand her place in a changing world. And torn, even then, between loyalty, duty, and honor in the face of betrayal.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton

“No one wanted to serve anymore. Not when, under our new government, any man, whether a gentleman or a scoundrel, could say whatever he pleased and print whatever libels he wished without consequence. And the ignorant populists, spewing tobacco juice as they ranted, took full advantage. As if the notion that all men were created equal somehow meant that one need not aspire to knowledge and ability—all distinctions of class, breeding, or merit discarded, all notions of civility deserted.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton

“Angelica had been right. Love was a thing beyond reason, beyond control. A thing almost predestined. And now that this powerful emotion had finally taken hold of me, I was entirely helpless against it.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“Spoken words fail me where my pen rarely does.”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“Patsy, suffering strengthens our constitutions and builds inner fortifications so that we never fall prey to the same agony twice. We must take upon ourselves a smaller evil to defend against the greater evil. We must take upon ourselves a smaller pain in order to survive.” I”
― Stephanie Dray, America's First Daughter

“What a high-minded thing revolution had seemed when it started; but now I wondered if, in trying to bring about liberty, we’d instead opened the gates of endless war, bloodshed, and immorality.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton

“I knew that a man was not only himself but also who he wished to be.”
― Stephanie Dray, Lily of the Nile

“But any parent who has lost a child will tell you that grief is a monster less vanquished than held at bay. That, like love, survival is a choice to be made anew every morning, and sometimes one must pretend at being healed just to get through the day.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“Though the natural weakness of her body hinders her from doing what men can perform, she has a mind as valiant and as active for the good of her country as the best of us. - Plutarch”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton