But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think?
AIMEE BENDERMy genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.” – Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)
More Aimee Bender Quotes
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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.
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Kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.
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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.
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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.
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The writing I tend to think of as ‘good’ is good because it’s mysterious.
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You can ruin anything if you focus at it.
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It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moments.
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It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we’d read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.
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But I loved George in part because he believed me; because if I stood in a cold, plain room and yelled FIRE, he would walk over and ask me why.
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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.
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The wine glasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.
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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.
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Large meadows are lovely for picnics and romping, but they are for the lighter feelings. Meadows do not make me want to write.
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I watched as she added a question mark at the end. Arc, line, space, dot.
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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.
AIMEE BENDER