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I like birthday cake. It’s so symbolic. It’s a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just ‘Happy birthday!’ because it’s this emblem of childhood and a happy day.

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

Feeling Lighter Lovely Meadow Picnic Romp Writing
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

Apartment Building Dark Hand Look Love Peer Room Rush Streetside Window
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

Bed Big Interest Novel Sustain Work Writing
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

Appreciate Flaw Kid Later Life Mess Parent Seem Strong
You feel wonderful, you feel like somebody knows you’re alive, you feel fear because it could be a bomb, because you think you’re that important.
AIMEE BENDER

Alive Bomb Important Somebody Think Wonderful
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

Bulb Comfort Company Good Light Living Room Took Warmest Yellow
You’re the perfect girl’, he said, rubbing his chin. ‘You expect nothing.
AIMEE BENDER

Expect Girl Nothing Perfect Rub
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

Burger Feel Handmade Hold Item Little Person
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.
AIMEE BENDER

Code Daughter Details exchange Father Language Read
You try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground.
AIMEE BENDER

Nuts Trying Seem Totally Underground
This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.
AIMEE BENDER

Burger Cook Depress Eat Everyone Leave Little More Nobody
I don’t think so, I don’t agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.
AIMEE BENDER

Agree Far Hope Said Think Unbearable
Pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.
AIMEE BENDER

Body Darling Daughter Different Kind Pour Siphoned Tamer Water
A Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.
AIMEE BENDER

Ask Doritos Doubt Gift Great Nothing
I give boring people something to discuss over corn.
AIMEE BENDER

Bore Corn Discuss Giving People
We’re all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there’s too much thought and not enough heart.
AIMEE BENDER

Bigger Brain Dry Heart Smart Up World
But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think?
AIMEE BENDER

Believe Burning Kept Passion Second Skirt Think Thinking Wonder
Glen Hirshberg’s stories are haunting, absolutely, but not only because of the content.
AIMEE BENDER

Absolute Brain Content Haunt Sadness Skill Sorry
My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.
AIMEE BENDER

Anytime Cave Eyelid Private Want
I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.
AIMEE BENDER

All Echo Like More Participant
That at the same time of this very intimate act of concentrating so carefully on the details of our mother’s palm and fingertips.
AIMEE BENDER

Air Careful Concentrate Detail Intimate Mother Palm Same Time
It was a fleeting statement, one I didn’t think she’d hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us.
AIMEE BENDER

After Birthed Fleet Help Homework Kiss Love Pour Statement
When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It’s nourishing; it’s rejuvenating.
AIMEE BENDER

Beautiful Body Feel Good Interesting Language Nourish Treat
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

Carefully Concentrate Desperate Detail Intimate Leave Open Part Remnant Ritual Time
I felt the crumpled paper that had taken the place of my lungs expand as if released from a fist.
AIMEE BENDER

Expand Fist List Lung Paper Release Taken
It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.
AIMEE BENDER

Allow Back Best Later Page Seem Unconscious Work Writing
Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn’t love me – I felt the wash of her love every day.
AIMEE BENDER

Brother Daughter Day Every Lover Mom More She

I like birthday cake. It’s so symbolic. It’s a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just ‘Happy birthday!’ because it’s this emblem of childhood and a happy day.

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Popular Authors

I like birthday cake. It’s so symbolic. It’s a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just ‘Happy birthday!’ because it’s this emblem of childhood and a happy day.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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