Aimee Bender Quotes

I felt her come by later, as I was dozing off. Her standing, by my bed. The depth of shadow of a person felt behind closed eyelids. ~ Aimee Bender

I get a little myopic in the act of doing any writing. I think I'm not as interested or not as able to write about balance, because I think there's something I want to try to get at. I'm trying to get at something about the experience of growing up or about families. ~ Aimee Bender

Not getting bored of my own story and/or character is one of the main struggles I have had with novel writing, and I have put to bed big chunks of work that just didn't sustain my interest. ~ Aimee Bender

The people were all busy in their cars, listening to the radio, so there was no one to smile at, so I just sent my love to the traffic lights. No one ever appreciates them, all day long, working so hard to turn red and yellow and green, right in time with us to make sure we don't crash into each other. If there was any tiny chance, even the tiniest chance, that they happened to be alive, I bet I was the first person ever to tell them they were special. You are special, I said out loud in my car, but in case they couldn't hear, I cracked my window open. "You are special," I said, to the night air.
And just like that, a green light. ~ Aimee Bender

But the rest of the evening is nothing but the trembling edges of something I am so tired of feeling and I do not want to feel anymore. ~ Aimee Bender

It can feel so lonely, to see strangers out in the day, shopping, on a day that is not a good one. On this one: the day I returned from the emergency room after having a fit about wanting to remove my mouth. Not an easy day to look at people in their vivid clothes, in their shining hair, pointing and smiling at colorful woven sweaters.
I wanted to erase them all. But I also wanted to be them all, and I could not erase them and want to be them at the same time.
At home, Joseph was nicer to me than usual and we played a silent game of Parcheesi for an hour in the slanted box of remaining sunlight on the carpet. Dad came by and brought me a pillow. Mom went to take a nap. Joseph won. I went to bed early. I woke up the same. ~ Aimee Bender

It is these empty spaces you have to watch out for, as they flood up with feeling before you even realize what's happened. ~ Aimee Bender

I like the idea of a place that is dealing with painful, messy, frightening, and very human events that is also so beautiful and ethereal. ~ Aimee Bender

For me as a person, friendships are incredibly important to me, but in writing, they can distract me. ~ Aimee Bender

When the light at Vernon turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us. ~ Aimee Bender

But truthfully? Let me tell you what I honestly think.
I think, maybe he hasn't even noticed that I'm gone.
But. I have. ~ Aimee Bender

After many years the woman died, of natural causes. And a few years after that, the ogre died. Eventually, his mistresses died, down on the ground, in the people village, over decades. The war men and women died. The human girl who had escaped her early death died, across the land, over by the ocean, in her shack of blue bowls and rocking chairs. The witch, who had originally made the cake and made up up the spell and given it as a gift to her beloved ogre friend, died.
The cake went on and on. Time passed...
And the cake, always wanting to please, the cake who had found a way to survive its endlessness by recreating its role over and over again, tried to figure out, in its cake way, what this light-dappled object might want to eat. So it became darkness, a cake of darkness. It did not have to be human food. It did not have to be digestible through a familiar tract. It lay there on the dirt, waiting, a simmering cake of darkness. Through time, and wind, and earthquakes, and chance. At last the cloak fell out of the tree and blew across the land and happened upon the cake where it ate its darkness and extinguished its own dappled light. The cloak disappeared into night and was not seen again, as it was only a piece of coat shaped darkness now and could not be spotted so easily, had there been any eyes left to see it. It floated and joined with nowhere.
Darkness was overtaking everything, anyway, pouring over the land and sky. The cake itself, still in the shap ~ Aimee Bender

On the drive home, she sat in the backseat, as she did on occasion. He said it was to protect her from more dangerous car accidents; she liked thinking for a moment that he was her chauffeur, that she had reached a state of adult richness where you did nothing for yourself anymore and returned to infancy. ~ Aimee Bender

I liked Hans Christian Andersen because the tales were so dark and tragic. ~ Aimee Bender

Her blush was the color of a coral reef, but smooth. ~ Aimee Bender

But the sky is interesting, it changes all the time. ~ Aimee Bender

Your eyes shine," he said. "How do they do that?"
"Blood," she said. ~ Aimee Bender

I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist. ~ Aimee Bender

I wanted to marry wood. I wanted to chew down some two–by–fours, crawl inside a tree, slide elm into my aorta so that every beat of every second was a grand waltz with luck. ~ Aimee Bender

Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own. ~ Aimee Bender

My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope - make yourself a structure you can live inside. ~ Aimee Bender

Another time he woke me up in the middle of the night, lifted me off the pale blue sheets, led me outside to the stars and whispered: Look, Annie, look - there is no space for anything but dreaming. I listened, sleepily, wandered back to bed and
found myself wide awake, staring at the ceiling, unable to dream at all ~ Aimee Bender

We end up kissing her for an hour, and her lips are so soft they are almost like a joke. ~ Aimee Bender

He made a good salary but he did not flaunt it. He'd been raised in Chicago proper by a Lithuanian Jewish mother who had grown up in poverty, telling stories, often, of extending a chicken to its fullest capacity, so as soon as a restaurant served his dish, he would promptly cut it in half and ask for a to-go container. Portions are too big anyway, he'd grumble, patting his waistline. He'd only give away his food if the corners were cleanly cut, as he believed a homeless person would just feel worse eating food with ragged bitemarks at the edges – as if, he said, they are dogs, or bacteria. Dignity, he said, lifting his half-lasagna into its box, is no detail. ~ Aimee Bender

The sensor did not seem to be restricted to my mother's food, and there was so much to sort through, a torrent of information, but with George there, sitting in the fading warmth of the filtered afternoon springtime sun spilling through the kitchen windows, making me buttered toast which I ate happily, light and good with his concentration and gentle focus, I could begin to think about the layers. The bread distributor, the bread factory, the wheat, the farmer. The butter, which had a dreary tang to it. When I checked the package, I read that it came from a big farm in Wisconsin. The cream held a thinness, a kind of metallic bumper aftertaste. The milk- weary. All of those parts distant, crowded, like the far-off sound of an airplane, or a car parking, all hovering in the background, foregrounded by the state of the maker of the food. ~ Aimee Bender

And, sure, fine, I do check my phone about every two minutes, but so do a lot of people, and it's better than smoking, that's what I say. It's the new, lung-safe cigarette. ~ Aimee Bender

I write on a very strict 2-hour-a-day schedule, and I really respond to structure and invented rules. So even if I'm finding out good information on a character, I will stop when I'm set to stop. ~ Aimee Bender

Walk soft, like whispers. ~ Aimee Bender

That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. ~ Aimee Bender

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on. ~ Aimee Bender

The best way I can think to describe it, she said, ' is the way, when you're driving on the freeway at night how everyone can see the moon in their window. Every car on the road. Every car feels the moon is following that car, even in the other direction, right? Everyone in that entire hemisphere can see the moon and think it is there for them, is following where they go. ~ Aimee Bender

You can ruin anything if you focus at it. ~ Aimee Bender

This woman he met was the woman he met and however you try, you cannot unmeet. ~ Aimee Bender

When she left the store, emboldened, receipt tucked into her purse, folded twice, Janet thought of all the chicken dishes she had not sent back even though they were either half-raw or not what she had ordered. Chicken Kiev instead of chicken Marsala, chicken with mushrooms instead of chicken a la king: her body was made up of the wrong chickens. ~ Aimee Bender

My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want. ~ Aimee Bender

She too looked like a regular lady, living in the world- didn't seem particularly with it or excitable or stellar. But that chicken, bathed in thyme and butter- I hadn't ever tasted a chicken that had such a savory warmth to it, a taste I could only suitably identify as the taste of chicken. Somehow, in her hands, food felt recognized. Spinach became spinach- with a good farm's care, salt, the heat and her attention, it seemed to relax into its leafy, broad self. Garlic seized upon its lively nature. Tomatoes tasted as substantive as beef. ~ Aimee Bender

As a kid, I often figured it was good to be patient to a fault. ~ Aimee Bender

I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant. ~ Aimee Bender

There are students that are scattered, who need to see something through to the finish, but I would say there are possibly more who do not entertain the leaps of the mind that need to be nurtured, and this desire to finish becomes more about being a good student than about finishing something interesting. Where does work ethic fit in with writing? I think that's pretty complicated from one writer to the next. You need some kind of work ethic, but what does it look like for you? ~ Aimee Bender

He moved his fingers down her whole spine, one by one by one, and during the time it took to do that, his brain remained absolutely quiet.
It is these empty spaces you have to watch out for, as they flood up with feeling before you even realize what's happened; before you find yourself, at the base of her spine, different. ~ Aimee Bender

My favorite of all was still the place on Vermont, the French cafe, La Lyonnaise, that had given me the best onion soup on that night with George and my father. The two owners hailed from France, from Lyon, before the city had boomed into a culinary sibling of Paris. Inside, it had only a few tables, and the waiters served everything out of order, and it had a B rating in the window, and they usually sat me right by the swinging kitchen door, but I didn't care about any of it.
There, I ordered chicken Dijon, or beef Bourguignon, or a simple green salad, or a pate sandwich, and when it came to the table, I melted into whatever arrived. I lavished in a forkful of spinach gratin on the side, at how delighted the chef had clearly been over the balance of spinach and cheese, like she was conducting a meeting of spinach and cheese, like a matchmaker who knew they would shortly fall in love. Sure, there were small distractions and preoccupations in it all, but I could find the food in there, the food was the center, and the person making the food was so connected with the food that I could really, for once, enjoy it. ~ Aimee Bender

I love the idea of numerology, but I don't really believe in it. But I like thinking about what numbers convey. ~ Aimee Bender

One thing I don't want to feel is marketplace pressure, so I'm really glad I enjoy teaching because I can rely on that for a salary. I think it would be such a different game if I had to write a book that has to sell well. ~ Aimee Bender

She is walking around the living room naked and ~ Aimee Bender

Last day I saw him human, he was sad about the world. ~ Aimee Bender

I want to be violated by insight. ~ Aimee Bender

We have better things to do. We realize life is not just a dress rehearsal and if you realize it, you don't need a bumper sticker to remind you. ~ Aimee Bender

He said, I always thought the woman I'd marry would hit me easy, in a bolt of lightning, and there is not lightning there is not even thunder there is not even rain. ~ Aimee Bender

When we sleep together, he holds me like he loves me. I've noticed this: when it's the first date, and you fuck, the guy holds you much better than he does the next few times. The first date, you're sort of a stand-in for whomever he loved last, before he fully realizes you're not her, so you get all this nice residue emotion. ~ Aimee Bender

I will never die, thought the cake to itself, in even simpler terms, as cakes did not have sophisticated use of language. ~ Aimee Bender

Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early. ~ Aimee Bender

In terms of foods for me, I think I have more of the usual associations - foods from childhood that I associate with care and love, from relatives or special restaurants like the kind elderly man who dusted seasoning salt on French fries at the corner burger joint. ~ Aimee Bender

But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think? Before she knew it was candles, did she think she'd done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips, and the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived? ~ Aimee Bender

My birthday is in March, and that year it fell during an especially bright spring week, vivid and clear in the narrow residential streets where we lived just a handful of blocks south of Sunset. The night-blooming jasmine that crawled up our neighborhood's front gate released its heady scent at dusk, and to the north, the hills rolled charmingly over the horizon, houses tucked into the brown. Soon, daylight savings time would arrive, and even at early nine, I associated my birthday with the first hint of summer, with the feeling in classrooms of open windows and lighter clothing and in a few months no more homework. My hair got lighter in spring, from light brown to nearly blond, almost like my mother's ponytail tassel. In the neighborhood gardens, the agapanthus plants started to push out their long green robot stems to open up to soft purples and blues. ~ Aimee Bender

Twice I'd come home as they were finishing, and, honestly, I cannot think of a lonelier sound on a Saturday night than one's roommate having a giant orgasm and then making an embarrassed sssh sound, realizing that maybe through her pleasure she'd heard the front door open and close. ~ Aimee Bender

For me, even in my first book, the pleasures of writing anything magical is that it has to be physical. It has to be grounded and very much in this world. Then, I get to play with all the consequences of this new thing. ~ Aimee Bender

Dad lost his job. Then he got a new job. Then he got his old job back and went back to it. They were all in the same building. ~ Aimee Bender

Because when, previously, they had wrenched a book out of his hands, he had stared into space so disconcertingly it made the rest of us feel like putting a bag over his head. Sometimes, if he didn't have a book, to occupy Joseph's eyes I would plant a cereal-box side panel in front of him, and his eyes would slide over and attach to the words, as if they could not do anything but roam and float in the air until words and numbers anchored them back into our world. ~ Aimee Bender

It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments. ~ Aimee Bender

I find I can write for two lines, and then I have nothing else to say. For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there's something more to say. ~ Aimee Bender

He had set up a telescope on a corner of the roof, and we went up to take a look.
This is time travel, he said, narrowing an eye to set the lens. Because the light is old. We're seeing back in time.
No, we said, wrinkling our noses. We are seeing right now, today.
No, he said, the light has to travel to us and it takes millions of years. What you're seeing is time.
Excuse me, we said. We were embarrassed to correct him. He seemed so smart. What we're seeing is space.
It's space, yes, he said. It's also time. You're seeing what has already happened. ~ Aimee Bender

It is difficult to want to tell a grave that it is not immortal. It's so obvious at that point. ~ Aimee Bender

Large meadows are lovely for picnics and romping, but they are for the lighter feelings. Meadows do not make me want to write. ~ Aimee Bender

The world can ask you to participate, but it's a day-today decision if you want to agree to that proposal. ~ Aimee Bender

I just like the feeling of finding the right word in my mind and employing it. I get pleasure from that feeling. I prefer language to gesture. I figured other people might, too. ~ Aimee Bender

I wanted to bathe in plum juice, rediscover my body and adorn it in kiwi circles. ~ Aimee Bender

And in it all, the sensation of shaking my fists at the sky, shaking my fists high up to the sky, because that is what we do when someone dies too early, too beautiful, too undervalued by the world, or sometimes just at all
we shake our fists at the big, beautiful, indifferent sky, and the anger is righteous and strong and helpless and huge. I shook and I shook, and I put all of it into the dress. ~ Aimee Bender

She bops around really energetically but she's also still. Like she's moving her torso but her feet don't move, and then sometimes she'll take one step, and it feels like a thesis statement. Like it is a topic sentence about her butt. ~ Aimee Bender

Mom's smiles were so full of feeling that people leaned back a little when she greeted them. It was hard to know just how much was being offered. ~ Aimee Bender

I asked them: Does it hurt? And the scar people nodded, yes. But it felt somehow wonderful, they said. For one long second, it felt like the world was holding them close. ~ Aimee Bender

Although psychotherapy and writing are distinct in many ways, they are two fields whose great resource is the vast plains of the unconscious mind and how this landscape gets translated into words. As a writer, you are often asking your mind to dream while awake, and if remembering dreams is difficult in general, then it seems to follow that it would be sometimes grueling to conjure up the murky depths on call, eyes open. (Robert M. Young) calls it madness, which is a strong word, but it's not a bad one in exaggeration, because he's talking about creating a safe and bound space in which to explore all sorts of darknesses that collect in the recesses of the mind. He's talking about what we do not understand, or know about, or have control over. And the unconscious, if treated well, is the writer's very good friend. Allowing it room is crucial. Allowing it structure can be the safest way to access it without feeling overwhelmed. ~ Aimee Bender

I noticed, when I taught elementary school, how true the squeaky wheel thing is, and how endearing squeaky wheels can be! Because when you're being a squeaky wheel, you're also really letting people know who you are. ~ Aimee Bender

I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart, away from each other. Tears are only a threat in groups. ~ Aimee Bender

I am going to host Thanksgiving myself and instead of a turkey I'm serving a big human butt. ~ Aimee Bender

I have trouble describing my own style, since it's sort of like describing my own eye color or something. ~ Aimee Bender

Most teenage girls don't give old people the time of day which is sad because all old people do all the time is think about how nice it was to be a teenager so long ago. ~ Aimee Bender

I didn't mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side. ~ Aimee Bender

YOU'RE IN MY MOUTH, I said. GET OUT OF MY MOUTH. ~ Aimee Bender

That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother's palm and fingertips, he was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I'd always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph's part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air. ~ Aimee Bender

... kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks. ~ Aimee Bender

He breathed in her hair, the sweet-smelling thickness of it. My father usually agreed with her requests, because stamped in his two-footed stance and jaw was the word Provider, and he loved her the way a bird-watcher's heart leaps when he hears the call of the roseate spoonbill, a fluffy pink wader, calling its lilting coo-coo from the mangroves. Check, says the bird-watcher. Sure, said my father, tapping a handful of mail against her back. ~ Aimee Bender

I used to think death might be hidden somewhere on our bodies.
Tucked behind the pupil like a coin, slid beneath the thumb nail, ribbon-wrapped around a wrist bone. A sharp, dark sliver; a loose, pale pellet. Each person different. Each lifespan set. On the day of your death, it melts out through your entire body, a warm, broken bath bead. Until then, it waits-sealed and silent. ~ Aimee Bender

During the descent, she gave the doily to the man across the aisle, worried about his ailing son, and the needlework was so elegant it made him feel better just to hold it. That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. ~ Aimee Bender

Don't smile," he said. ~ Aimee Bender

The address label wouldn't come off so I put the ripped electric bill back in its stack by the phone. On top of all the other bills, all the papers that ran the house invisibly ~ Aimee Bender

A Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there. ~ Aimee Bender

Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can't fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can't heat up as well. Cold draft comes in. ~ Aimee Bender

We're like the couple on the sitcom that has good sparks but never get together for the sake of ratings. ~ Aimee Bender

When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It's nourishing; it's rejuvenating. ~ Aimee Bender

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness
cry and then walk
but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order. ~ Aimee Bender

It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things. ~ Aimee Bender

Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped. ~ Aimee Bender

Sherrie would be there, and the last time I'd seen her at a social event she burst into tears when she saw me and ran out of the room. You're upset, I'd yelled after her, meanly. ~ Aimee Bender

I knew if I ate anything of hers again, it would lkely tell me the same message: help me, I am not happy, help me
like a message in a bottle sent in each meal to the eater, and I got it. I got the message. ~ Aimee Bender

Ponytail girl leaned over and she and the tall boy kissed and it was carcinogen gums and magical. ~ Aimee Bender

He had a good face to him, something chunky in his nose that I could get behind. ~ Aimee Bender

With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds. ~ Aimee Bender

Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia ~ Aimee Bender

Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it. ~ Aimee Bender

Glen Hirshberg's stories are haunting, absolutely, but not only because of the content
the stories themselves haunt, they stick around, they linger, inhabiting a little corner of the reader's brain and resurfacing to evoke mystery or sadness or longing. It's a pleasure to dive into Hirshberg's storytelling skills in American Morons. ~ Aimee Bender